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SEKMONS 



FOB 



THE NEW LIFE 



B? 



HORACE BUSHNELL 



REVISED EDITION. 



:iuu( 



NEW YORK-. 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. 
1876. 




3X12L33 



COPTRIGHT v 1876, BY 

MAHY A BUSHNELL, 



John F. Trow & Son, 

PRINTERS, 
205-213 Bast \-2 th Street, 

NEW YORK. 



TO MY DEAR FLOCK IN HARTFORD, 



"WHO HAVE ADHERED TO ME 



IN DAYS OF ACCUSATION, 



AND HAVE UPHELD ME POR A QUARTER OP A CENTUHI 

IN THE MUCH GREATER TRIALS OF 
A CONSCIOUSLY INSUFFICIENT AND DEFECTIVE M1NISTHY, 

THESE SERMONS ARE INSCRIBED 

AS A TOKEN OF 
RESPECT AND IMPERISHABLE AFFECTION. 

II. B. 



\ 



CONTENTS 
i. 

EVERY MAN'S LIFE A PLAN OP GOD. 

FACE 

Isaiah xlv. 5. — " I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." £ ' 

II. 

THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 
Job xxxii. 8. — "But there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration 

of the Almighty giveth them understanding." ...... 29 

III. 
DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE SHOWN PROM ITS RUINS. 
Romans iii. 13-18. — "Their throat is an open sepulchre; with 
their tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of asps is 
under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitter- 
ness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and 
misery are in their ways. And the way of peace they have 
not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." . 50 

IV. 

THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 
Luke xv. 17. — "And when he came to himself, he said, How 
many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and 
to spare., and I perish with hunger." . . . . 71 

Y. 

THE REASON OP FAITH. 
Joiin vi. 30. — u But T said unto you, That ye also have seen me 

and believe not.' 87 



IV CONTENTS 

VI. 

REGENERATION. 

PAGE 

John iii. 3. — " Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily 
I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can not see 
the kingdom of God." 106 

VII. 

THE PERSONAL LOYE AND LEAD OF CHRIST. 
John x. 3. — " And he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth 

them out." 127 

VIII. 

LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 
Job xxxvii. 21. — u And now men see not the bright light which 

is in the clouds : but the wind passeth, and cleanseth them." 143 

IX. 

THE CAPACITY OP RELIGION EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 
Matthew xxv. 28. — "Take, therefore, the talent from him." . . 16£ 

X. 

UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 
John xx. 8. — " Then went in also that other disciple." . . . 186 

XL 

OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 
P&ALH cxix. 54:. — "Thy statutes have been my songs in the 

house of my pilgrimage." 206 

XII. 

HAPPINESS AND JOY. 
xv. 11. — "These things have I spoken unto you, that my 
joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." 225 



CONTEXTS. V 

XIII. 
THE TRUE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

PAQE 

Revelations ii. 4. — "Nevertheless, I have somewhat against 

thee, because thou hast left thy first love." 243 

XIV 

THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 
J John, iii. 3.— -"And every man that hath this hope in him 

purifleth himself, even as he is pure." 283 

XV. 

LIYIXG TO GOD IX SMALL THINGS 
Luke xvi. 10. — "He that is faithful in that which is least, is 
faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is 
unjust also in much." 282 

XVI. 

THE POWER OF AX ENDLESS LIFE. 
Hebrews vii. 16. — "Who is made, not after the law of a carnal 

commandment, but after the power of an endless life." . . 304 

XVII. 

RESPECTABLE SIX 
John viii. 9. — " And they which heard it, being convicted by 
their own conscience, went out, one by one, beginning at the 
eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the 
woman standing in the midst." 326 

XVIII. 

THE POWER OF GOD IX SELF-SACRIFICE. 
I Corinthians L 24.—" Christ the power of God." . . . . 346 



VI CONTENTS. 

XIX. 
DUTY NOT MEASURED BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 

FA OS 

Lckr ix. 13. — "But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat . 364 

XX. 

HE THAT KNOWS GOD WILL CONFESS HIM. 
PsAXii xl. 10. — "I have not hid thy righteousness within my 
heart ; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation : I 
have not concealed thy loving-kindness and thy truth from 
the great congregation." 382 

XXI. 

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 
Revelations i. 9. — "The kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." 399 

XXII. 

SPIRITUAL DISLODGEHENTS. 
Jeremiah xlviii. 11. — "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, 
and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied 
from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; 
therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not 
changed." 115 

XXIIi. 

CHRIST AS SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD. 
Hebrews vii. 26. — " Separate from sinners, and made higher than 
the heavens. 434 



I 



EVER1 MAN'S LIFE A PLAN OF GOD. 



ISAIAH xlv. 5. — u I girded thee, though thou hast not 
known meP 

So beautiful is the character and history of Cyrus, the 
person here addressed, that many have doubted whether 
the sketch given by Xenophon was not intended as an 
idealizing, or merely romantic picture. And yet, there 
have been examples of as great beauty unfolded, here and 
there, in all the darkest recesses of the heathen world, and 
it accords entirely with the hypothesis of historic verity 
in the account given us of this remarkable man, that he is 
designated and named by our prophet, even before he is 
born, as a chosen foster-son of God. "I have surnamed 
thee," he declares, "I have girded thee, though thou hast 
not known me." And what should he be but a model 
of all princely beauty, of bravery, of justice, of impartial 
honor to the lowly, of greatness and true magnanimity in 
every form, when God has girded him, unseen, to be the 
minister of his own great and sovereign purposes to the 
nations of his time. 

Something of the same kind will also be detected in the 
liistory and personal consciousness of almost every great 
and remarkable character. Christ himself testifies to the 
girding of the Almighty, when he says, — "To this end 
was I born, and for this purpose came I into the world." 
Abraham was girded for a particular work and mission, in 



10 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

what is otherwise denominated his call. Joseph, in Egypt^ 
distinguishes the girding of God's hand, when he comforts 
his guilty brothers in the assurance, — "So, it was not you 
that sent me hither, but God." Moses and Samuel were 
even called by name, and set to their great life-work, in 
the same manner. And what is Paul endeavoring, in all 
the stress and pressure of his mighty apostleship, but to per- 
form the work for which God's Spirit girded him at his 
call, and to apprehend that for which he was apprehended 
of Christ Jesus. And yet these great master-spirits of the 
world are not so much distinguished, after all, by the acts 
they do, as by the sense itself of some mysterious girding 
of the Almighty upon them, whose behests they are set en 
to fulfill. And all men may have this ; for the humblest 
und commonest have a place and a work assigned them, in 
the same manner, and have it for their privilege to be 
always ennobled in the same lofty consciousness. God is 
girding every man for a place and a calling, in which, 
taking it from him, even though it be internally humble, 
he may be as consciously exalted as if he held the rule of 
a kingdom. The truth I propose then for your considera- 
tion is this, — 

That God has a definite life-plan for every hitman person^ 
girding him, visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing, tuhich 
it will be the true significance and glory of his life to have 
accomplished. 

Many persons, I am well aware, never even think of any 

8uch thing. They suppose that, for most men, life is a 

necessarily stale and common affair. What it means for 

them they do not know, and they scarcely conceive that it 

ans any thing. They even complain, venting heavy 



A PLiU OF GOD. 11 

sighs, that, while some few are set forward by God to do 
great works and fill important places, they are not allowed 
to believe that there is an}' particular object in their ex- 
istence. It is remarkable, considering how generally 
this kind of impression prevails, that the Holy Scriptures 
never give way to it, but seem, as it were, in all possi 
ble ways, to be holding up the dignity of common life, 
and giving a meaning to its appointments, which the 
natural dullness and lowness of mere human opinion can 
not apprehend. 

They not only show us explicitly, as we have seen, that 
God has a definite purpose in the lives of men already 
great, but they show us, how frequently, in the conditions 
of obscurity and depression, preparations of counsel going 
on, by which the commonest offices are to become the 
necessary first chapter of a great and powerful history. 
David among the sheep ; Elisha following after the plough ; 
Nehemiah bearing the cup ; Hannah, who can say nothing 
less common than that she is the wife of Elkanah and a 
woman of a sorrowful spirit, — who, that looks on these 
humble people, at their humble post of service, and dis- 
covers, at last, how dear a purpose God was cherishing in 
them, can be justified in thinking that God has no particu- 
lar plan for him, because he is not signalized by any 
kind of distinction? 

Besides, what do the scriptures show lis, but that God 
has a particular care for every man, a personal interest in 
him and a sympathy with him and his trials, watching 
for the uses of his one talent as attentively and kindly 
and approving him as heartily, in the right employment of 
it, as if he had given him ten ; and, what is the giving out 
of the talents itself, but an exhibition of the fact that God 



12 EVERY MaK'S LIFE 

has a definite purpose, charge and woik, be it tiiis or tha\ 
for every man? 

They also make it the privilege of every man to live in 
the secret guidance of God; which is plainly nugatory, 
unless there is some chosen work, or sphere, into which 
he may be guided ; for how shall God guide him, having 
nothing appointed or marked out for him to be guided 
into? no field opened for him, no course set down which 
is to be his wisdom? 

God also professes in his Word to have purposes pre-ar- 
ranged for all events ; to govern by a plan which is from 
eternity even, and which, in some proper sense, compre- 
hends every thing. And what is this but another way 
of conceiving that God has a definite place and plan ad- 
j usted for every human being ? And, without such a plan, 
he could not even govern the world intelligently, or make 
a proper universe of the created system ; for it becomes a 
universe only in the grand unity of reason, which includes 
it. Otherwise, it were only a jumble of fortuities, without 
counsel, end or law. 

Turning, now, from the scriptures to the works of God, 
how constantly are we met here by the fact, everywhere 
visible, that ends and uses are the regulative reasons of all 
existing things. This we discover often, when we are 
least able to understand the speculative mystery of objects ; 
for it is precisely the uses of things that are most palpable. 
These uses are to God, no doubt, as to us, the significance 
of his works. And they compose, taken together, a grand 
reciprocal system, in which part answers actively to part, 
constructing thus an all-comprehensive and glorious whole. 
And the system is, in fact, so perfect, that the loss or displace- 
ment of any member would fatally derange the genera] 



A pla:n of god. 13 

order. If there were any smallest star in heaven thai 
had no place to fill, that oversight would beget a disturb- 
ance which no Leverrier could compute ; because it would 
be a real and eternal, and not merely casual or apparent 
disorder. One grain, more or less, of sand would disturb7 
or even fatally disorder ther whole scheme of the heavenly 
motions. So nicely balanced, and so carefully hung, are 
the worlds, that even the grains of their dust are counted, 
and their places adjusted to a correspondent nicety. There 
is nothing included in the gross, or total sum, that could 
be dispensed with. The same is true in regard to forces 
that are apparently irregular. Every particle of air is 
moved by laws of as great precision as the laws of the 
heavenly bodies, or, indeed, by the same laws ; keeping its 
appointed place, and serving its appointed use. Every 
odor exhales in the nicest conformity with its appointed 
place and law. Even the viewless and mysterious heat, 
stealing through the dark centers and impenetrable depths 
of the worlds, obeys its uses with unfaltering exactness, 
dissolving never so much as an atom that was not to be 
dissolved. What now shall we say of man, appearing, as 
it were, in the center of this great circle of uses. They 
are all adjusted for him : has he, then, no ends appointed 
for himself? Noblest of all creatures, and closest to God, 
as he certainly is, are we to say that his Creator has no 
definite thoughts concerning him, no place prepared for 
him to fill, no use for him to serve, which is the reason of 
his existence? 

There is, then, I conclude, a definite and proper end, or 
issue, for every man's existence; an end, which, to the 
heart of God, is the good intended for him, or for which 
he ft T as intended; that which he is privileged to become, 



14 EVERY MANS LIFE 

called to become, ouglit to become ; that which God will 
3t him to become and which he can not miss, save by 
his own fault. Every human soul has a complete and per- 
fect plan, cherished for it in the heart of God — a divine 
biography marked out, which it enters into life, to live. 
This life, rightly unfolded, will be a complete and beauti- 
ful whole, an experience led on by God and unfolded by 
his secret nurture, as the trees and the flowers, by the secret 
nurture of the world ; a drama cast in the mould of a per- 
fect art, with no part wanting; a divine study for the man 
himself, and for others; a study that shall forever unfold, 
in wondrous beauty, the love and faithfulness of God; 
great in its conception, great in the Divine skill by which 
it is shaped ; above all, great in the momentous and glori- 
ous issues it prepares. What a thought is this for every 
human soul to cherish ! "What dignity does it add to life! 
What support does it bring to the trials of life ! What in« 
stigations does it add to send us onward in every thing 
that constitutes our excellence ! We live in the Divine 
thought. We fill a place in the great everlasting plan of 
God's intelligence. We never sink below his care, never 
drop out of his counsel. 

But there is, I must add, a single, but very important 
and even fearful qualification. Things all serve their uses, 
and never break out of their place. They have no power 
to do it. Not so with us. We are able, as free beings, to 
refuse the place and the duties God appoints ; which, if we 
dOj then we sink into something lower and less worthy of 
us. That highest and best oondil ion for which God designed 
us is no more possible. We are fallen out jf it, and it 
can not be wholly recovered. And yet, as that was the 
best thing possible for us in the reach of God's original 



A PLAN OF GOD. 15 

counsel, so there is a place designed for us now, which is 
the next best possible. God calls us now to the best thing 
left, and will do so till all good possibility is narrowed 
down and spent. And then, when he can not use us any 
more for our own good, he will use us for the good of 
others, — an example of the misery and horrible despera- 
tion to which any soul must come, when all the good ends, 
and all the holy callings of God's friendly and fatherly 
purpose are exhausted. Or it may be now that, remitting 
all other plans and purposes in our behalf, he will hence- 
forth use us, wholly against our will, to be the demonstra- 
tion of his justice and avenging power before the eyes of 
mankind ; saying over us, as he did over Pharaoh in the 
day of his judgments, "Even for this same purpose have 
I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and 
that my name might be declared throughout all the earth." 
Doubtless, He had other and more genial plans to serve in 
this bad man, if only he could have accepted such ; but, 
knowing his certain rejection of these, God turned his 
mighty counsel in him wholty on the use to be made of 
him as a reprobate. How many Pharaohs in common life 
refuse every other use God will make of them, choosing only 
to figure, in their small way, as reprobates ; and descend- 
ing, in that manner, to a fate that painfully mimics his. 

God has, then, I conclude, a definite life-plan set for 
every man; one that, being accepted and followed, will 
conduct him to the best and noblest end possible. No 
qualification of this doctrine is needed, save the fearful 
one just named; that we, by our perversity, so often refuse 
to take the place and do the work he gives us. 

It follows, in the same way, that, as God, in fixing on 
our end or use, will choose the best end or use possible, so 



16 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

he will appoint for us the best manner possible of attain- 
ing it ; for, as it is a part of God's perfection to choose the 
best things, and not things partially good, so it will be in 
■ all the methods he prescribes for their attainment. And 
bo, as you pass on, stage by stage, in jour courses of ex- 
perience, it is made clear to you that, whatever you have 
laid upon 3 r ou to do or to suffer, whatever to want, what- 
ever to surrender or to conquer, is exactly best for you 
Your life is a school, exactly adapted to your lesson, and 
that to the best, last end of your existence. 

No room for a discouraged or depressed feeling, there- 
fore, is left yon. Enough that you exist for a purpose 
high enough to give meaning to life, and to support a 
genuine inspiration. If your sphere is outwardly humble, 
if it even appears to be quite insignificant, God under- 
stands it better than you do, and it is a part of his wisdom 
to bring out great sentiments in humble conditions, great 
principles in works that are outwardly trivial, great char- 
acters under great adversities and heavy loads of incum- 
brance. The tallest saints of God will often be those who 
walk in the deepest obscurity, and are even despised or 
quite overlooked by man. Let it be enough that God is 
in your history, that the plan of your biography is his, 
and the issue he has set for it the highest and the best. 
ly, then, man, with thy feeble complaints and 
irish despondencies. There is no place left for this 
kind of nonsense. Let it fill thee with cheerfulness and 
exalted feeling, however deep in obscurity your lot may 
be, that God is leading you on, girding you for a work, 
preparing you to a good that is worthy of his Divine 
tnagnifii If God is really preparing us all to become 

that which is the very highest and best thing possible 



A PLAN OF GOD. 17 

there ought never to be a discouraged or unclicerfal being 
in the world. 

Nor is it any detraction from such a kind of life that 
the helm of its guidance is, by the supposition, to be in 
God, and not in our own will and wisdom. This, in fact, 
is its dignity: (it is a kind of divine order, a creation 
molded by the loving thoughts of God; in that view, 
to the man himself a continual discovery, as it is unfolded, 
both of himself and God. A discovery of some kind it 
must be to all; for, however resolutely or defiantly we 
undertake to accomplish our own objects, and cut our own 
way through to a definite self-appointed future, it will 
never be true, for one moment, that we are certain of this 
future, and will almost always be true that we are met by 
changes and conditions unexpected. This, in fact, is one 
of the common mitigations even of a selfish \nd self- 
directed life, that its events come up out of the unknown 
and overtake the subject, as discoveries he could not shun, 
or anticipate. Evil itself is far less evil, even to the 
worldly man, that it comes by surprises. Were the 
scenes of necessary bitterness, wrong, trial, disappointment, 
self-accusation, every such man has to pass through in his 
life, distinctly set before him at the beginning, how forbid- 
ding generally, and how dismal the prospect. T\ r e say, 
therefore, how frequently, " I could not have endured these 
distasteful, painful 3-ears, these emptinesses, these trials 
and torments that have rent me, one after another, if I had 
definitely known beforehand what kind of lot was before 
tne." And yet, how poor a comfort is it to such pains and 
disasters that they overtook the sufferer as surprises and 
sorrows not set down beforehand in the self-appointed 
programme of life. How different, how inspiring ar.d 



18 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

magnificent, instead, to live, by holy consent, a life all dis- 
covery ; to see it unfolding, moment by moment, a plan 
of God, our own life-plan conceived in his paternal 
love ; each event, incident, experience, whether bright oi 
dark, having its mission from him, and revealing, either 
now cr in its future issues, the magnificence of his favor- 
ing counsel ; to be sure, in the dark day, of a light that 
will follow, that loss will terminate in gain, that trial will 
issue in rest, doubt in satisfaction, suffering in patience, 
patience in purity, and ail in a consummation of greatness 
and dignity that even God will look on with a smile. 
How magnificent, how strong in its repose, how full of 
rest is such a kind of life ! Call it human still, decry it, 
let it down by whatever diminutives can be invented, still 
it is great; a charge which ought even to inspire a dull 
minded man with energy and holy enthusiasm. 

But, the inquiry will be made, supposing all this to be 
true, in the manner stated, how can we ever get hold of 
this life-plan God has made for us, or find our way into it ? 
Here, to many if not all, will be the main stress of doubt 
and practical suspense. 

Observe, then, first of all, some negatives that are im 
portant and must be avoided. They are these : — 

You will never come into God's plan, if you study sin- 
gularity ; for, if God has a design or plan for every man's 
life, then it is exactly appropriate to his nature; and, as 
every man's nature is singular and peculiar to himself, — as 
peculiar as his face or look, — then it follows that God will 
lead every man into a singular, original and peculiar life, 
without any study of singularity on his part. Let him 
seek to be just what God will have him, and the talents, 



A PL AX OF GOD. 19 

the duties and circumstances of his life will require hirn 
to be, and then he will be just peculiar enough. He will 
have a life of his own ; a life that is naturally and, there- 
fore, healthily peculiar ; a simple, unaffected, unambitious 
life, whose plan is not in himself, but in God.^ 

As little will he seek to copy the life of another, No 
man is ever called to be another. God has as many plana 
for men as he has men ; and, therefore, he never requires 
them to measure their life exactly by any other life. We 
are not to require it of ourselves to have the precise feel- 
ings, or exercises, or do the works, or pass through the 
trials of other men ; for God will handle us according to 
what we are, and not according to what other men are. 
And whoever undertakes to be exercised by any given 
fashion, or to be any given character, such as he knows or 
has read of, will find it impossible, even as it is to make 
himself another nature. God's plan must hold and we 
must seek no other. To strain after something new and 
peculiar is fantastic and weak, and is also as nearly wicked 
as that kind of weakness can be. To be a copyist, work- 
ing at the reproduction of a human model, is to have no 
faith in one's significance, to judge that God means nothing 
in his particular life, but only in the life of some other 
man./' Submitting himself, in this manner, to the fixed 
opinion that his life means nothing, and that nothing is left 
for him but to borrow or beg a life-plan from some other 
man, what can the copyist become but , an affectation or a 
dull imposture. 

In this view also, you are never to complain of youi 
birth, your training, your employments, your hardships; 
never to fancy that you could be something if only you had 
a different lot and sphere assigned you. God understands 



20 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

his own plan, and lie knows what you want a great 
deal better than you do. , The very things that you most 
deprecate, as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably 
what you most want. What you call hindrances, obstacles, 
discouragements, are probably God's opportunities; and 
it is nothing new that the patient should dislike his medi- 
cines, or any certain proof that they are poisons. No ! a 
truce to all such impatience ! Choke that devilish envy 
which gnaws at your heart, because you are not in the 
same lot with others ; bring down your soul, or, rather, 
bring it up to receive God's will and do his work, in your 
lot, in your sphere, under your cloud of obscurity, against 
your temptations ; and then you shall find that your con- 
dition is never opposed to your good, but really consistent 
with it. Hence it was that an apostle required his converts 
to abide each one in that calling wherein he was called ; to 
fill his place till he opens a way, by filling it, to some 
other ; the bondman to fill his house of bondage with love 
and duty, the laborer to labor, the woman to be a woman, 
the men to show themselves men, — all to acknowledge 
God's hand in their lot, and seek to cooperate with that 
good design which he most assuredly cherishes for them. 

Another frequent mistake to be carefully avoided is that, 
while you surrender and renounce all thought of making 
up a plan, or choosing out a plan, for yourself, as one that 
you set by your own will, you also give up the hope or 
expectation that God will set you in any scheme of life, 
where the whole course of it will be known, or set down 
beforehand. If you go to him to be guided, he will guide 
you ; but he will not comfort your distrust, or half trust 
of him, by showing you the chart of all his purposes con- 
cerning vou. lie will only show you into a way wtere^ 



A PLAN OF GOD. 21 

if you go cheerfully and trustfully forward, lie will bIiotc 
you on still furtlier v /(N"o contract will be made with you, 
save that he engages, if you trust him, to lead you into 
the best things, all the way through. And, .f they are 
better than you can either ask or think beforehand, they 
will be none the worse for that. 

But we must not stop in negatives. How, then, or by 
what more positive directions can a man, who really desires 
to do it, come into the plan God lays foi nim, so as to live 
it and rationally believe that he does? You are on the 
point of choosing, it may be, this or that calling, warning 
to know where duty lies and what the course God himself 
would have you take. Beginning at a point most remote, 
and where the generality of truth is widest, 

Consider (1,) the character of God, and you will draw a ' 
large deduction from that ; for, all that God designs for 
you will be in harmony with his character. He is a being 
infinitely good, just, true. Therefore, you are to know 
that he can not really seek any thing contrary to this in 
you. You may make yourselves contrary, in every attri- 
bute of character, to God ; but he never made you to be- 
come any thing different from, or unworthy of, himself. 
A good being could not make another to be a bad being, 
as the proper issue and desired end of his existence; least 
of all could one infinitely good. A great many employ- 
ments or callings are, by these first principles, forever cut 
off. No thought is permitted you, even for a moment, of 
[my work or calling that does not represent the industry, 
justice, truth, beneficence, mercy of God. 

(2.) Consider your relation to him as a creature. All ' 
created wills have their natural center and rest in God's 
will. In him they all come into a play of harmony, and 



22 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

the proper harmony of being is possible only in this way. 
Thus, you know that you are called to have a will perfectly 
harmonized with God's and rested in his, and that gives 
you a large insight into what you are to he, or what is the 
real end of your being. In fact, nine-tenths of your par- 
ticular duties may be settled, at once, by a simple reference 
in this manner to what God wills. 

(3.) You have a conscience, which is given to be an in- 
terpreter of his will and thus of your duty, and, in both, 
of what you are to become. 

(4.) God's law and his written Word are guides to 
present duty, which, if faithfully accepted, will help to set 
you in accordance with the mind of God and the plan he 
has. laid for you. " I am a stranger in the earth," said one, 
" hide not thy commandments from me;" knowing that 
God's commandments would give him a clue to the true 
meaning and business of his life. 

(5.) Be an observer of P rovidence ; for God is showing 
you ever, by the way in which he leads you, whither he 
means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world's 
wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever he 
brings to your hand. 

Again (6,) consult your friends, and especially those who 
are most in the teaching of God. They know your talents 
and personal qualifications better, in some resjDects, than 
you do yourself. Ask their judgment of you and of the 
spheres and works to which you are best adapted. 

Once more (7,) go to God himself, and ask for the calling 
of God; for, as certainly as he has a plan or calling for 
you, he will somehow guide } r ou into it. And this is the 
proper office and work of his Spiri t By this private 
teaching he can show us, and will, into the very plau that 



A PLAN OF GOD. 23 

is set for us. And this is the significance of what is pre- 
scribed as our duty, viz., living and walking in the Spirit ; 
for the Spirit of God is a kind of universal presence, or 
inspiration, in the world's bosom; an unfailing inner light, 
which if we accept and live in, we are guided thereby into 
a consenting choice, so that what God wills for us we also 
will forourselves. — settling into it as the needle to the 
pole.yfBy this hidden union with God, or intercourse with 
him, we get a wisdom or insight deeper than we know 
ourselves; a sympathy, a oneness with the Divine will 
and love. yWe go into the very plan of God for us, and 
are led along in it by him, consenting, cooperating, 
answering to him, we know not how, and working out, 
with nicest exactness, that good end for which his unseen 
counsel girded us and sent us into the world. In this 
manner, not neglecting the other methods just named, but 
gathering in all their separate lights, to be interpreted in 
the higher light of the Spirit, we can never be greatly at 
a loss to find our way into God's counsel and plan. The 
duties of the present moment we shall meet as they rise, 
and these will open a gate into the next, and we shall thus 
pass on, trustfully and securely, almost never in doubt as 
to what God calls us to do. 

It is not to be supposed that you have followed me, in 
such a subject as this, without encountering questions from 
within that are piercing. It Las put you on reflection; it 
has set }^ou to the inquiry, what you have been doing and 
becoming thus far in your course, and what 3-011 are here- 
after to be? Ten, twenty, fifty, seventy years ago, you 
came into this living world, and began to breathe this 
mortal air. The guardian angel that came to take change 



24 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

of you said, " To tin's end is he born, for this cause 13 he 
come into the world." Or. if this be a Jewish fancy, God 
said the same himself. , lie had a definite plan for you, a 
good end settled and cherished for you in his heart. Thia 
it was that gave a meaning and a glory to your life. Apart 
fiom this, it was not, in his view, life for you to live; it 
was accident, frustration, death. What now, soul, hast 
thou done ? what progress hast thou made ? how much of 
the blessed life-plan of thy Father hast thou executed? 
How far on thy way art thou to the good, best end thy 
God has designed for thee ? 

Do I hear thy soul confessing, with a suppressed sob 
within thee, that, up to this time, thou hast never sought 
God's chosen plan at all. Hast thou, even to this hour, 
and during so many years, been following a way and a 
plan of thine own, regardless, hitherto, of all God's pur- 
poses in thee ? Well, if it be so, what hast thou gotten ? 
How does thy plan work ? Does it bring thee peace, con 
tent, dignity of aim and feeling, purity, rest ; or, does it 
plunge thee into mires of disturbance, scorch thee in flames 
of passion, worry thee with cares, burden thee with bitter 
reflections, cross thee, disappoint, sadden, sour thee ? And 
what are thy prospects ? what is the issue to come ? After 
thou hast worked out this hard plan of thine own, will it 
come to a good end ? Hast thou courage now to go on 
and work it through ? 

IVrhaps you may be entertaining yourself, for the time, 
with a notion of your prosperity, counting yourself happy 
in past successes, and counting on greater successes to come. 
Do you call it, then, success, that you are getting on in a 
plan of your own ? There can not be a greater delusion 



A PLAN OF GOD. 25 

You set up a plan that is not God's, and rejoice that it 
seems to prosper ; not observing that you are just as much 
farther off from God's plan for you and from all true wis- 
dom, as you seem to prosper more. And the day is com- 
ing when just this truth will be reyealed to you, as the 
bitterest pang of your defeat and shame. 

No matter which it be, prosperity or acknowledged de- 
feat, the case is much the same in one as in the other, if 
you stand apart from God and his counsel. I There is 
nothing good preparing for any man who will not live in 
God's plan.y If he goes a prospecting for himself, and will 
not apprehend that for which he is apprehended, it can not 
be to any good purpose. 

And really, I know not any thing, my hearers, more 
sad and painful to think of, to a soul properly enlightened 
by reason and God's truth, than so many years of Divine 
good squandered and lost; whole years, possibly many 
years, of that great and blessed biography which God 
designed for you, occupied by a frivolous and foolish in- 
vention of your own, substituted for the good counsel of 
God's infinite wisdom and love. 0, let the past suffice ! 

Young man, or woman, this is the day of hope to you. 
All your best opportunities are still before you. Now, 
too, you are laying your plans for the future. Why not 
lay them in God? Who has planned for you as wisely 
and faithfully as he? Let your life begin with him. 
Believe that you are girded by your God for a holy and 
great calling. Go to him and consecrate your life to him, 
knowing assuredly that he will lead you into just that life 
which is your highest honor and blessing. 

And what shall I say to the older man, who is further 

3 



26 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

on in liis course and is still without God in the world? 
The beginning of wisdom, my friend, you have yet to 
learn. You have really done nothing, as yet, that yon 
was sent into the world to do. All your best opportuni- 
ties, too are gone or going by. The best end, the next 
best, and the next are gone, and nothing but the dregs of 
opportunity is left. And still Christ calls even you. 
There is a place still left for you ; not the best and bright- 
est, but an humble and good one. To this you are called 
for this you are apprehended of Christ Jesus still. 0, 
come, repent of your dusty and dull and weary way, and 
take the call that is offered. 

All men, living without God, are adventurers out upon 
God's world, in neglect of him, to choose their own course. 
Hence the sorrowful, sad looking host they make. 0, that 
I could show them whence their bitterness, their dryness, 
their unutterable sorrows, come. 0, that I could silence, 
for one hour, the noisy tumult of their works, and get 
them to look in upon that better, higher life of fruitfulness 
and blessing to which their God has appointed them. 
Will they ever see it ? Alas ! I fear ! 

Friends of God, disciples of the Son of God, how in- 
spiring and magnificent the promise, or privilege that is 
offered here to yoiu Does it still encounter only unbelief 
in your heart? (does it seem to you impossible that you 
can ever find your way into a path prepared for you by 
God, and be led along in it by his mighty counsel? Let 
me tell you a secret. It requires a very close, well-kept 
life to do this ; a life in which the soul can have confidence 
always toward God; a life which allows the Spirit always 
to abide and reign, driven away by no affront of selfishness. 



A PLAN OF GOD. 27 

Tliere must be a complete renunciation of self-will. God j 
and religion must be practically first; and the testimony : / 
that we please God must be the element of our peace^/ 
/And such a disciple I have never known who did not have 
it for his joy that Gocl was leading him on, shaping his life 
for him, bringing him alone out of one moment into the 
next, year by year J To such a disciple, there is nothing 
strained or difficult in saying that God's plan can be found, 
or that this is the true mode and privilege of life. , Noth- 
ing to him is easier or more natural. He knows God ever 
present, feels that Gocl determines all things for him, re- 
joices in the confidence that the everlasting counsel of his 
Friend is shaping every turn of his experience. He does 
net go hunting after this confidence ; it comes to him, 
abides in him, fortifies his breast, and makes his existence 
itself an element of peace. And this, my brethren, is your 
privilege, if only you can live close enough to have the 
secret of the Lord with you. 

How sacred, how strong in its repose, how majestic, how 
nearly divine is a life thus ordered! The simple thought 
of a life which is to be the unfolding, in this manner, of a 
Divine plan, is too beautiful, too captivating, to suffer one 
indifferent or heedless moment. Living in this manner, 
e\(2vy turn of your experience will be a discovery to you 
of God, every change a token of his Fatherly counsel. 
Whatever obscurity, darkness, trial, suffering falls upon you; 
your defeats, losses, injuries; your outward state, employ- 
ment relations ; what seems hard, unaccountable, severe, 
or, as nature might say, vexatious, — all these you will see 
are parts or constitutive elements in God's beautiful and 
good plan for you, and, as such, are to be accepted with a 



28 EVERY MAN'S LIFE 

smile. Trust God! have an implicit trust in God! and 
these ver}^ things will impart the highest zest to life. If 
you were in jour own will, you could not bear them; and, 
if you fill], at any time, into your own will, they wil] 
break you down. But, the glory of your condition, as a 
Christian, is that you are in the mighty and good will of 
God. Hence it was that Bunyan called bis bero Great 
Heart; for, no heart can be weak tbat is in the confidence 
of God. Sec how it was witb Paul : counting all things 
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge; enduring, 
witb godlike patience, unspeakable sufferings; casting 
every thing behind him, and following, on to apprehend 
that for which he was apprehended. He had a great and 
mighty will, but no self-will : therefore, he was strong, a 
true lion of the faith.^y Away, then, with all feeble com- 
plaints, all meagre and mean anxieties. Take your duty, 
and be strong in it, as God will make you strong. The 
harder it is, the stronger, in fact, you will be. Under- 
stand, also, that the great question here is, not what you \ 
will get, but what you will become. /The greatest wealth 
you can ever get will be in yourself. Take your burdens, 
and troubles, and losses, and wrongs, if come they must 
and will, as your opportunities, knowing that God has 
girded you for greater things than these. O, to live out 
such a life as God appoints, how great a thing it is! — to 
do the duties, make the sacrifices, bear the adversities. 
finish the plan and then to say, with Christ, (who of ug 
will be able ? )- - u It Is finished ! " 



II 

THE SPIRIT IX 1CAK. 

Job xxxii 8. — "But there is a spirit in rnan, t and the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding" 

It is something great in man, as the speaker, Eliku, 
conceives, that he is spirit, and, as being such, is capable 
of being inspired. For he is not, as some commentators 
appear to suppose, re-publishing here, the historical fact, 
that the Almighty breathed into man, at the first, a living 
understanding soul ; but, speaking in the present tense, he 
magnifies man as being able to be inspired, because he ia 
spirit, and God that he inspires him. 

I undertake to enlist you here in a range of contempla- 
tion exceedingly remote from the apprehension of most 
persons in our time. So completely occupied are they 
with the humanitarian, world-ward relations of life, that 
the God-ward relations pass unheeded, and, for the most 
part, unrecognized. Or, if they sometimes think of such 
relations, it is only in the sense that we are responsible to 
God, as we are to any human government, for what we do 
as men, not in the sense that our very nature has itself a 
God-ward side, being related constitutionally to him, as 
plants are to the sun, or living bodies to the air they 
breathe. That we may duly apprehend a truth so far out 
of the way of our times, and yet so necessary to any fit 
conceptions of our nature and life, let me bespeak, on your 
part, even a voluntary and compelled attention. 

3* 



30 THE SPIRIT IK MAN. 

My subject is, the spirit in man; or what is the same, the 
fact that ice are, as being spirit, permeable and inspirable 
by the Almighty. 

The word "spirit" means literally, breath, and it is ap- 
plied to the soul, not merely because of its immateriality, 
but for the additional reason that the Almighty can breathe 
himself into it and through it. The word "inspiration" 
as here used, denotes this act of inbreathing, and it will 
serve the convenience of my subject to use it in this mean- 
ing in my discourse ; though it is not exactly coincident 
with the more common meaning attached to it, when we 
speak of the inspiration of the writers of Scripture. I 
certainly need not apologize for the use of a term, in, at 
least, one of its Scripture meanings. I only notify you that 
any one is inspired, as I shall here speak, who is breathed 
in, visited internally, and so, all infallibility apart, raised in 
intelligence, guided in choice, convinced of sin, upheld in 
suffering, empowered to victory. In this more general 
sense, Bezaleel was inspired when he " was filled with the 
Spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, to devise 
cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, 
and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of 
timber." Any one is inspired, as we now speak, just as 
far as he is raised internally, in thought, feeling, perception, 
or action, by a Divine movement within. In the capacity 
of this, lie is called an inspirable creature, and has this for 
one of his highest distinctions. What higher distinction 
can lie have, than a • apaeity for God; to let in the Divine 
re, to entertain the eternal spirit witnessing with his 
spirit, to be gifted thus with understanding, ennobled in 
impulse, raised in power, and this, without any retrenchment 



THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 31 

of his personal freedom, but so as even to intensify his 
proper individuality. 

Just as it is the distinction of a crystal, that it is trans- 
parent, able to let the light into and through its close flinty 
body, and be irradiated by it in the whole mass of its 
substance, without beino- at all more or less distinctly a 
crystal, so it is the grand distinction of humanity that it 
is made permeable by the divine nature, prepared in that 
manner to receive and entemple the Infinite Spirit ; to be 
energized bv him and filled with his ptotv, in every fae- 

£5 v O v J vi 

Lilty, feeling and power. Our accepted doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit really implies just this, that we are made capa- 
ble of this interior presence of the divine nature ; that, as 
matter is open to the free access and unimpeded passage of 
the electric flash, so is the soul open to the subtle motions 
of the Eternal Spirit, and ready, as it were, to be the vehicle 
of God's thought and action; so of his character and joy. 

As to the manner of this divine presence, or working, 
we, of course, know nothing. We only know, reverting 
to comparisons just given, that, as matter conducts elec- 
tricity, so the human soul becomes a conductor of the di- 
vine will and sentiments. Or as we cannot see how the 
crystal receives the light, or how, being a perfectly opaque 
body in itself, it becomes luminous without the least 
change in its own organization, so here we can understand 
that the human soul, or spirit, is made capable of the di- 
vine spirit, without any loss of itsownhuman individuality; 
but, the manner of the fact is, in both cases, uninvestigable 
and mysterious. 

The Scriptures use a great variety of figures to represent 
this truth, and give us a vivil practical sense of it, but 



32 the spirit in man. 

they do not undertake to show ns the manner. They 
compare it to the mind that bloweth where it listeth — thou 
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. 
They speak of it as teaching — he shall teach you all things. 
Drawing, — except the Father which hath sent me draw 
him. Quickening — it is the spirit that quickenetk. Beget- 
ting anew, — born of water and of the spirit. Sealing, — 
sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Dwelling in the 
soul, — the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Walking in it, — I 
I will walk in them. Leading, — led of the Spirit. Strength- 
ening, — strengthened with might by thy Spirit. Witnessing 
reciprocally with us, — bearing witness with our spirit. By 
reason of a certain analogy that pertains between the works 
of the Spirit in lost man, and the working of the life prin- 
ciple in bodies, it is also called, comprehensively, " the spirit 
of life." In which, however, nothing is explained to us 
respecting the manner ; for we do not know, at all, how 
the life-principle works, we only know its effects; that it 
quickens the dead matter, organizes, vivifies and conserve,-} 
fa by its presence, and that, somehow, the matter, without 
ceasing at all to be matter, obeys it. 

Let us now consider what and how much it signifies 
that we are spirit; capable, in this manner, of the divine 
concourse. In this point of view it is, that we are raised 
most distinctly above all other forms of existence known 
do us. "When it is declared in the scripture, that the Spirit 
of God moved upon the waters of chaos, it is not meant 
that be was inspiring chaos, but only that he was acting 
creatively in it. So it is not understood, when all the 
host of heaven are said to be created by the breath of 
the Almighty, that the stars arc inspired creatures; much 
less, that the brute animals are inspired, because they are 



THE SPIKIT IN MAN. 3d 

said to live, when the Almighty senclcth forth his Spirit 
The will, or force of God, can act omnipotently on all cre- 
ated things, as things. He can penetrate all central fires 
and dissolve, or annihilate, every most secret atom of the 
worlds, but it can not be said that these things receive him. 
Nothing can truly receive him but spirit. He may pass 
through things and have them pliant everywhere to his 
touch, but they derive nothing from him that is personal 
to him. No creature can truly receive him, save one that 
is constitutionally related to him in terms that permit 
correspondence ; there must be intelligence offered to his 
intelligence, sentiments to his sentiments, reason to his 
reason, will to his will, personality to his person. To speak 
of an inspired mountain, or planet, or breeze of air, an in- 
spired block, or an inspired brute, has even a sound of 
irreverence. Not so to speak of an inspired man ; for man 
is spirit, a nature configured to God, and therefore able to 
receive him. And by this, he is separated from, and set 
above all other of God's creatures, and shown to be scarcely 
less different from them in kind than the Creator himself 
True, he is a creature, but a creature how gloriously dis- 
tinguished; one that can partake the Infinite Creator him- 
self, and come up thus into the range of his principles, 
motives, thoughts and powers. Not even the obedient 
worlds of heaven can so receive him. Following in the 
track of his will, and filling even immensity with their stu- 
pendous frame of order, they yet have nothing fellow to God 
in their substance, and can not, therefore do what the ham- 
blest soul is able ; can not receive the communication of God. 
They can be shaken, melted, exploded, annihilated by his 
will, but they are not vast enough, or high enough in qual- 
ity to be inspired by him Spirit only can be inspired. 



34 THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 

We sometimes undertake to magnify the dignity of man 
by dwelling on the wonderful achievements of his intelli- 
gence. He creates and uses language, makes records of 
the past, enacts laws, builds institutions, climbs the heav- 
ens, searching out their times and orbits, penetrates the 
secret affinities and counts the atoms of matter, bridges 
the sea by his inventions, commands the lightning itself 
to think his thoughts and run upon his errands in the ends 
!)f the world, — none but a stupendous creature, we suppose, 
and rightly, can be manifested in acts of intelligence like 
these. And yet, to be penetrated and lighted up from 
within by the mind of God, to have the understanding of 
things unseen by the inspiration of the Almighty, in one 
word, to be spirit, and have the consciousness even of God, 
as being irradiated and filled with his divine fullness ; this, 
after all, is the distinction that makes any mere show of 
intelligence quite insignificant. 

We sometimes dwell on the fact of the moral nature in 
man, conceiving that in this, he is seen to be, most of all, 
exalted. And our impression is right, if by the moral we 
understand, also, the spiritual and religious nature, as we 
often do. But, in strict propriety, the moral nature is 
quite another and vastly inferior thing, as respects the 
scale of its dignity. The spiritual is even as much higher 
than the moral, as the moral is higher than the animal, 
To be a moral being is to have a sense of duty and a 
power of choice that supports and justifies responsibility, 
Tt is that in us which recognizes the supremacy of moral 
a or abstract notions, and acknowledges their binding 
force, as laws or principles. Animals, for example, have 
a certain power of intelligence, but they have no sense of 
duty, or law; that is a point quite above their tier of 



THE SPIRIT IN MA If . 35 

existence. But to be raised in this manner above tliem, as 
being simply a moral creature, is by no means any princi- 
pal distinction. An atheist can have moral ideas, and, 
acting on the plane of the world as a member of human 
society 3 can feel and can personally honor the obligations 
of principle. But, to be spirit, or to have a spiritual na- 
ture, is to be practically related to a being m us and about 
us. who is above all mere abstractions, or principles : viz., 
to the person of God Himself. It is to be capable, not of 
duty only, or of sentiments of duty, but of receiving God, 
of knowing Him within, of being permeated, filled, enno- 
bled, glorified, by his infinite Spirit. Ideas can not walk 
in us, or witness, or beget anew, or seal; but, the living 
God, communicating Himself to souls, can do this and 
more — can raise them to his own plane of existence, and 
make them partakers with him, even in his character itself. 
And here it is that humanity culminates, or reveals the 
summit of its dignity : it is. in beino- spirit, and, as such, 
open to the visitation and the indwelling power of God. 
This it is, and this only, that makes us properly religious 
beings. Angelic nature can not, in this view, be higher. 
No creature being can excel in order a soul so configured to 
God as to be inspirable by him ; able to receive his im- 
pulse, fall into his movement, rest in his ends, and be finally 
perfected in the eternity of his joys. 

It is also in virtue of this distinction between a merely 
moral nature and spirit, that redemption, or the restoration 
from evil is possible; for that we are down, under evil, can 
not be denied. "Were there no other way for us, but to 
act on ourselves, and bring ourselves out of our disorder 
into the abstractions of law and duty, our case were utterly 
hopeless. As certainly as sin exists, we are in it forever. 



DO THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 

Were there no divine access to us, no capacity of inspira* 
tion in us, the body of a common rock could as well light 
itself up by the sun, as we come into the light again of 
true virtue, assisted only by the abstract principles, or light 
of duty. There is no possibility of redemption, or spirit- 
ual restoration for us, save that, as being open to the in- 
breathing of God, we may so be impregnated with a new 
power of life, and, by force of a divine visitation within, 
be regenerated in the holiness of God. All which is de- 
scribed in the scripture as being born of God. And what 
a height of almost divinity do we look upon in such a 
truth as that ! What man will not even tremble, as in awe 
of himself, when he contemplates, in this word of scrip- 
ture, the eternal Spirit of God coursing through the secret 
cells and chambers of his feeling, turning him about in his 
motions, breathing in his thoughts, and calling back his 
wild affections to a common center with His own. 

Glance a moment also, at this point, on the origin and 
constituted relation of our human nature, as spirit, with its 
author and creator. In the original scheme of existence, 
it was planned that man should be complete, and, as it 
were, infinite in God, by reason of his continual participa- 
tion of God. And this is the true normal state of man. 
In which normal state he was to be a continually inspired 
creature, conscious always of God as of himself, actuated 
by the divine character, exalted by the divine beatitude. 
This, accordingly, is the true idea of the fall. It is not 
that man fell away from certain moral notions, or laws, 
but it is that he fell away from the personal inhabitation. 
of God, lost inspiration, and so became a dark, enslaved 
creature, — alienated, as the apostle says, from the life of 
of God. Still, his capacity of inspiration is not absolutely 



THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 87 

gone, or closed up, and God is striving ever in the gospel, 
to regain Ms dominion over him, again to fill him as a re- 
newed creature with his Spirit. And when he is truly 
yielded up again to the inspiration of God, when he is 
born of the Spirit, then he is so far restored to the normal 
state from which he fell; made conscious again of Gcd, 
knowing God as revealed in his inmost life, by a knowl- 
edge that is immediate ; filled with joy and peace, fortified 
in strength, guided by the motions of eternal wisdom. 
This is the real significance, as we just now saw, of Chris- 
tian regeneration. It is not that the subject is set in a new 
relation to certain abstract laws, tests, obligations, but it 
is that he is brought back into his true normal relation to 
the Eternal Spirit of God, and begins to live, as he was 
made to live, an inspired life, — led of the Spirit, dwelt in, 
walked in by the Spirit, made to be a temple for the in- 
habitation of God, as he was originally designed to be. 
Sanctification, properly regarded, is, accordingly, nothing 
but a completed inspiration ; a bringing of every thought 
into captivity to the divine movement. And then, if we 
look at the attributes of character perfected, how superla- 
tive, how evidently divine they are — the self-renunciation, 
the patience, the fortitude in suffering, the courage superior 
to death and all torments of persecution, the repose, the joy, 
the abounding beneficence, the forgiveness of enemies, the 
fidelity to God, that dies sooner than renounce Ilim— these 
are the results and characters, by which the inspired life is 
distinguished. Meantime the subject of this grace is no 
way taken off from his proper individuality, by the state 
of inspired impulse into which he is come, but he appears 
rather to others, and also seems to himself, to have risen to 
a more complete and potent individuality than ho cvcj 

4 



SS THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 

knew before. It is as if lie had just here discovered him- 
self and awakened to the consciousness of his sovereignty 
over all things round him. Knowing that God worketh in 
him to will and to do, his willing and doing are just so much 
the more energetic, because he is raised in such a degree, 
by the new flood of movement upon which he is now em- 
barked. He governs himself the more sublimely, and, as 
it were, imperially, that he is crowned as a king hj the in- 
spiration he feels. He subdues the body, tramples pain 
and scorn, rides over death, and takes a reigning attitude 
in all things with his master ; simply because the individu- 
ality of his nature, never before developed under the bond- 
age of his fallen state, is now developed by his inspira- 
tion. As being spirit, he could never be developed, save 
in the divine atmosphere, and, therefore, being now at 
home in God again, he discovers at once what it is to be 
a man. 

Observe also, in some particulars, what takes place in 
the human soul, as an inspirable nature, when it is practi- 
cally filled and operated by the Spirit of God. It has 
now that higher Spirit witnessing with itself. "Witness- 
ing with," — there is a glorious and blessed concomitancy 
in the subject, a kind of double sense in w T hich he takes 
note, both of God and of himself together, and is, at one 
and the same moment, conscious of both. He is no lon- 
ger a simple feather of humanity, driven about by the 
fickle winds of this world's changes, but, in the new sense 
he has of a composite life, in which God Himself is a pre- 
siding force, lie is raised into a glorious equilibrium above 
himself, and set in rest upon the rock of God's eternity. 
Sis strength is immovable; indeed he is, in a sense, im- 
passible. All his powers and talents are quickened to a 



THE SPIEIT IN T£XN. 39 

gi( /w. His perceptions are cleared, his imagination exalted 
and his whole horizon within is gloriously luminous. 

See how it is in examples ; what a man is before the holy 
visitation, and what he becomes in it. The man Enoch, 
walked in the deep mires of this world, as little superior 
to them, or as little raised above them, as other men 
of his ungodly times. But, when the testimony came 
that he pleased God, when the internal witness of God's 
love was unfolded in his consciousness, his affinities were 
changed, even to such a degree that the earth could hold 
him down no longer. Joseph, as Joseph, is the favored 
son of his father, distinguished by a certain natural grace, 
and the wearing of a particular coat. But he begins to 
have dreams, and then a power to interpret dreams, and 
God is with him in both, leading him on to a great and 
splendid future, and finishing a glorious beauty in his char- 
acter, so that even we can see it as confidently as he knows 
it himself. Moses passes through the preparations of the 
scholar, then becomes a refugee tending sheep on the back- 
side of Horeb ; a man scarcely more, to us, than if he had 
been kept, till this time, in his mother's basket among the 
rushes of the Nile. But the call overtakes him and the 
spirit now of God's own might enters into him. He be- 
comes, at once, a prophet and a commander, the Liberator 
and Leader and Law-giver of his people, and the founder, 
in that manner, of a history that foreshadows, and even 
prepares a language for, the doctrines of Christ and the 
great mystery of salvation to be revealed in Christ, after 
fifteen centuries have passed away. Peter, again, the com- 
panion of Jesus and the hearer of his word, knew less, in 
feet, of Christ, and the real import of his mission, than 
Moses was able to represent, or anticipate, in the forms of 



40 THE SPIKIT IN MAN. 

his ritual. He even seemed to imagine, down to the day 
of Pentecost itself, that the kingdom of Christ was explo- 
ded in his death. But when his dull humanity was lighted 
up by the advent of the Spirit on that day, a marvelous 
insight rakes him, and he preaches Christ and the saving 
wonder of his death to three thousand men, as strangely 
overtaken with another sense of the glorious crucified as 
he. That was Peter as a man ; this is Peter the rock, on 
whom God is building his Church. So the man Paul is 
going to Damascus, full of learning, and exceedingly mad 
with Pharisaic sanctity, there to exterminate the hated, sect 
of Jesus. But this Paul is spirit, and behold a power 
breaks into him, on his way, and a voice internal calls to 
him, by which he is immediately become another ; himself, 
yet still another; an apostle whose inspiration is Christ 
and for whom he is ready to die. Then how little, how 
mad with a man's animosities ; now how lofty in his re- 
pose, how mighty in his action, hoAv nearly divine in his 
character. When John, the apostle, lands, or is landed 
at Patmos, it does not appear that he carried to it thoughts 
or perceptions that were higher, or more far-reaching than 
many others might carry. But he is in the Spirit on the 
Lord's day, and heaven is opened within, discovering to 
him, in scenes and images how sublime, the successive 
chapters of all the future ages of the kingdom. So there 
have, in all ages, been prophetic gifts, intimations, premo- 
nitions, dreams, visions, powers of healing, gifts of under- 
standing, discernings of spirits, whenever the eternal Spirit, 
in souls, lifts them above their merely human range, and 
becomes the inhabiting grace <>f their personality. lie en- 
riches them with wisdom, tills them with a supernatural 
confidence, opens resources of character, and shows their] 



THE SPIRIT IK MAN 41 

to the world in the grand koinonia or fellowship of hi? 
own majestic life. TVe see them girded thus, and going 
forth to subdue kingdoms and conquer the world to Christ; 
and we discover, in what they show of heavenly fire and 
brightness, how much it signifies that God comes into men, 
or can, in the communication of himself. Apart from God, 
they are low, short-sighted, earthly and weak ; but, being 
spirit, no sooner does the inspiration of the Almighty 
breathe into them, than they become powerful, and sea 
afar, and shine with a dignity that is visibly divine. 

But we do not really conceive the height of this subject, 
till we bring into view the place it holds in the economy 
of the heavenly state. All good angels and glorified men 
are distinguished by the fact that they are now filled with 
a complete inspiration from the fullness of God. It is their 
spiritual perfection that they are perfectly inspired, so that 
their whole action is in the divine impulse. All sin, all 
defect and spiritual distemper are drunk up or lost in the 
divine perfection. Their complete inspiration is their dig- 
nity, their strength, the spring of their swiftness and joy; 
and the Alleluia of their adoring eternity — the Lord God 
Omnipotent reigneth, — celebrates a reign not about them 
in things, nor in some third heaven above, but in them, in 
the more magnificent heaven of their own exalted powers 
and thoughts, and the glorified passions of their spirit. 
Inspiration is their heaven ; the Lord God giveth them 
light. All that we mean by the heavenly joy and perfec- 
tion is nothing but the restoration and the everlasting 
bloom of that high capacity for God, in which our normal 
state began, and of which that first state was only the 
germ, or prophecy. Man finds his paradise, when he is 
imparadised in God. It is not that he is squared to certain 

4* 



42 THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 

abstractions, or perfected in his moral conformity to cer- 
tain impersonal laws ; but it is that he is filled with the 
sublime personality of God, and forever exalted by his 
inspirations, moving in the divine movement, rested on 
the divine center, blessed in the divine beatitude. 

On the other hand, what is called hell, in the scripture, 
is a world of misery, constituted by the complete absence 
of God. It is outer darkness, because it is that night of 
the mind, which overtakes it when it strays from God and 
his light. To be severed eternally from God's Inspirations 
is enough, as Ave are constituted, to seal our complete misery. 
No matter whether it be that our capacity of inspiration 
is extinct, or whether it continues, gasping after the inspir- 
ing breath of God forever shut away. One is the misery 
of deformity and weakness; the other of exile and want. 
One is that of a soul halved in its capacity, which leaves 
the other half unregulated and torn by disorders which it 
has no higher nature left to subordinate and quell; the 
other is that of a soul in full capacity, torn by disorders 
equally hopeless and struggling with immortal want beside. 

I have endeavored, in this manner, to unfold, as I was 
able, the real import of the spirit in man, taken as a na- 
ture capable of receiving the inspiration of the Almighty. 
This, it can hardly be questioned, is the greatest of all dis- 
tinctions, — superior to free will, to conscience, to reason, 
and to every other gift or faculty of human nature. An 
important light is shed by this great truth on many points 
that meet us in the facts of human life and religious 
experience. 

1. It is a singu]ar and somewhat curious confirmation 
of what I have been saying, that poets and orators have 



THE SPIKIT IN MAN. 43 

been so ready, in all ages of the world, to invoke inspira- 
tions. It is not a mere rhetorical flourish of trumpets ag 
the critics appear to suppose. It is because they are made 
to be inspired. What they ask for, whether they know it 
01 not, is suggested by native affinities that crave a state of 
inspiration. They really want to be exalted above them- 
selves, and speak from a higher point as being divinely 
empowered. Hence their invocations of the Muses, and 
Apollo, and Mars, of seraphim and of Christ. They want 
some deific impulse. A something in their nature lifts 
them up to this. And the same is in us all. K"o man has 
any satisfaction in himself, simply as a person acting from 
his own center. He dwindles painfully in this manner 
and becomes a mere dry point, position without magnitude. 
We never come into the sense of magnitude till we receive 
God's measures in our feeling and rise to an attitude ex- 
alted by the consciousness of God. 

2. We discover in this subject what is the true ground 
and the rational significance of the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, as advanced in the gospels. It is not simply that 
sin has made a necessity for the divine nature to do some- 
thing new, but rather that sin had abolished something 
old, which needs to be restored. The doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit is grounded in the primordial nature of all spiritual 
beings. They are made, as we have said, to be divinely 
inhabited, made to live in eternal inspiration. The doc- 
trine of the Holy Spirit pertains to all created spirit in all 
worlds, only with modifications adapted to their state. To 
be in the Spirit is their noimal condition, their conserving 
law, their light, and strength, and glory. And therefore, 
when they sin, falling away from God's Spirit and drop- 
ping into the daikness of mere self-hood, there can, of 



44 THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 

coarse, be no recovery, till the eternal Spirit is re-installed 
in their nature. They require to be regenerated, born of 
the Spirit, which only means that the lost inspiration is 
now restored. Accordingly, the question so often mooted, 
whether men have power to regenerate themselves, is seen 
to be idle and even senseless ; for the plain reason that be- 
ing regenerated is the same thing as having inspiration; 
that is, being in the divine impulse and order. The pre° 
cise thing needed is to be raised out of the separated, self- 
centered, evil state into the inspired state, and the regula- 
tive order of God's own movement. Are we then going 
to regenerate ourselves, going to inspire ourselves? If 
it were a merely moral change, a change before the mind's 
own abstractions, ideas, or principles, it would not be plainly 
absurd to think it; but, when it is a renewal that even con- 
sists in the inbreathing of God's Spirit, and the being in 
his impulse, what Scougal appropriately calls " The Life 
of God in the Soul of Man," how shall it even be imagined 
that we can pass the change upon ourselves? And yet 
how simple it is ! How much easier, in fact, than to drag 
ourselves into good of any kind. Open your whole na- 
ture to God, offer yourselves in the spirit of contrition and 
of a real, unquestioning faith, to the occupancy of God, 
and the light will not more certainly break into the sky, 
and fill the horizon with day, when the morning sun is 
risen. Ask, in one word, and ye shall receive, seek and ye 
shall find. This now is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
It is not some new idea of the gospel. It is an advance 
of the Divine love to recover lost ground and bring back 
guilty souls among men, to that which is the original, 
everlasting bliss and beauty of all the created intelligences 
of God. 



THE SPIRIT IN MAN. 45 

3. "We discover, in our subject, what significance tlierc is 

in the pride which looks on spiritual religion as a humili- 
ation, or deems it even a mortification not to be endured. 
A mortification for this tiny speck of mortality not to stay 
by itself in its own littleness and frailty ! A mortification 
tc be brought up into the sense of God's own greatness ! 
A mortification to be ennobled by the Spirit of God, to 
have all our experience modulated and glorified by him! 
A mortification to be in God's wisdom, to be established 
in the confidence of his infinite majesty, to think with him 
and from him, to move in the glorious order of his perfect 
mind, and be the embodiment eternally of his impulse ! 
0, how petty and weak this pride ! how contemptible 
this contempt ! And yet, to be a Christian, to be given up 
to the Spirit of God and carefully offered to his holy 
guidance, — how many look on it as a weakness, a loss of 
dignity, a thing which only the tamer and less manly 
souls can descend to. I know not any thing else that ex- 
hibits the folly and conceit of man like this pride. As 
if it were some loss or abatement to be set in a plane with 
God, to have the inspiration of the Almighty, to receive a 
higher nature and life in the Eternal Life and impulse of 
God. It is as if the world of matter were to be ashamed 
of the sun, and shrink with inward mortification from the 
state of day! TThat is God but our day, the sun of our 
eternity, the light of our light, without whom, as the 
light of our seeing, the universe of nature were a mere 
phosphorescence of fete, unintelligent and cold, life a 
driblet of vanity, and eternity itself a protracted and 
amplified nothingness ? 0, my friends, this pride you have 
against religion will sometime be inverted, and you will 
be overwhelmed by the discovery of its true merit. You 



46 THE SPIEIT IN MAN. 

have read those powerful words, "shame and everlasting 
contempt." And what do j-ou think is their meaning? 
It is to look on the saints in the glory of their resurrection, 
and see them visibly perfected and ennobled by the inhabit- 
ation of God, and remember that such was the honor ycu 
rejected: to wither and mentally die in the sense of yout 
own little separated speck of vanity, when surrounded 
with holy myriads, gloriously transfigured by the light of 
God upon them, — this is shame and everlasting contempt. 
O, that I could help you to understand, as then- you will, 
how great a thing it is to be established everlastingly 
in the inspired state. These are they who are made kings 
and priests unto God ; the kinsmen of angels, the compan- 
ions of seraphim, bright, and strong, and free, because the 
Eternal Spirit leads them, and shines forever, in glorious 
evidence, through them. The Lord God giveth them light. 
Despised of man, they are princes now at God's right 
hand. Wise, great, mighty and majestic, creatures in the 
range of divinity, you may see, in their glorious beauty 
and the royal confidence of their eternity, how much it 
signifies to be a spirit capable of God and the abiding 
grace of his presence. 

Finally, it remains to conduct you forward into that 
view of the great future of Christianity on earth, in which 
much of the practical interest of our subject lies. It is a 
great misfortune, as I view it, that Ave have brought down 
the word inspiration to a use so narrow and technical; as- 
serting it only of prophecy and other scripture writings, 
and carefully excluding from it all participation, by our- 
selves, in whatever sense it might be taken. We cut our- 
selves off, in this manner, from any comraon terms with 
the anointed men of scripture and the scripture times. 



THE SPIRIT IN MAN, 47 

They belong to another tier of existence, tvith which we 
can not dare to claim affinity; and so we become a class 
unprivileged, shut down to a kind of second-hand life, 
feeding on their words. The result is that we are occupied 
almost wholly with second-hand relations to God. Our 
views of life are low and earthly, because our possibilities 
are low. And then we complain that Christian character 
grows worldly, and loses depth and tone, as if it were 
finally going to quite vanish out of the world ; that reli- 
gious convictions grow feeble ; that the ministry and the 
preached word produce no longer the true apostolic effects. 
As if any thing apostolic in power could remain, when no 
apostolic faith or grace is left us; when, in fact, the apostles 
and all scripture writers are really set between us and God 
to fence us away, not before, as examples to help us on ; 
for they, we are told, were inspired, which we, in no sense, 
can be. And so, being shut down to a meaner existence, 
there is no relief for us but in a recoil against inspiration 
itself, even that of the Holy Scriptures ; for, who will be- 
lieve, (how many are beginning to ask it,) that men were 
inspired long ages ago, when now any such thing is 
in credible? 

There is yet to be a revision of this whole subject. Not 
that we are to assert or claim the same inspiration with 
the writers of scripture. God has a particular kind of 
inspiration for every man, just according to what he is and 
the uses he will make of him ; for the tradesmen Bezaleel 
as truly as for Moses. He will dignify every right calling 
by being joined to us in it; for there is nothing given us 
to do, which he will not help us to do rightly and wisely, 
filling us with a lofty and fortified consciousness of hia 
presence with us in it. Tt is not for us to say, beforehand, 



48 THE SPIRIT IE MAN", 

what gifts, or what kind of inspiration God will bestow. 
Enough that he will take us into his own care, and work 
his own counsel in us. We have no lisp of authority 
for assuming that he never wants another book of scrip- 
ture written, though probably enough he does not. He 
will take care of that : only let us set no limits to the Holy 
One of Israel, and be ready to admit his guidance, and 
wait to be his qualified instruments, whether in work or 
suffering, whether as tradesmen., or merchants, or teachers, 
or ministers, or prisoners, or domestics, or slaves. 

I believe, furthermore, that there is going, finally, to be 
entered into the world a more general, systematic and 
soundly intellectual conviction respecting all these secret 
relations of souls to God. When we have been out into 
all the fields of science, and gotten our opinion of the 
scientific order by which God works in matter, and the 
laws immaterial by which all matter is swayed, I believe 
that we shall turn round God-ward, to consider what our 
relations may be on that side ; and then we shall not only 
take up the doctrine of the Spirit and of holy inspiration, 
looking no more, as now, after some mere casual, fitful, 
partially fantastic, visitations of what we call the Spirit, 
but we shall discover in it the truth of a grand, universal, 
intelligent, systematic, abiding inspiration, and the whole 
human race, lifted by this discovery, will fall into this gift, 
knowing that in God is the only divine privilege of exist- 
ence. To be in this inspiration will be nothing extraordi- 
nary new, any more than that men should be sober, which 
out of it they are not. Without something like this break* 
ing into the world's mind, that kingdom which is righteous- 
ness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and which it is 
promised shall finally fill the earth, can, manifestly, never 



THE SPIRIT IN MAN". 49 

como. These, too, are the last days of the promise ; days 
when the apostolic grace, instead of being confined to 
apostles, and shut away from the living, is to bathe, and 
fill, and glorify itself in all created minds on earth. 

And the sooner, brethren and friends, we begin to look 
for this the better. And what shall we do sooner than 
prepare ourselves for the grace that is offered. First, be- 
lieve that yon may have it, and may live in this abiding 
witness and participation of God's Spirit. Sacrifice every 
thing cheerfully and calmly for this. Esteem it no forbid- 
ding sanctimony to be holy. Aspire to these majestic 
honors, by a life rationally set to do God's will and purified 
to receive it. Live as with God ; and, whatever be your 
calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in 
it. Let his tabernacle so be set up in you, and be a witness 
for him, in that manner, of the day, when it shall be said, 
in the fullness of his universal light, the tabernacle of 
God is with men. 

5 



ITT. 

DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE SHOWN FROM ITS RUINS. 

EOMANS iii., 13-18. — " Their throat is an open sepulchre, 
with tlieir tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of o^sps is 
under their lips. Whose mouth is full of classing and bitter- 
ness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and 
misery are in their zuays. And the way of peace they have 
not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. 

A MOST dark and dismal picture of humanity, it must 
be admitted; and yet it has two sides or aspects. In 
one view, it is the picture of weakness, wretchedness, 
shame and disgust ; all which they discover in it who most 
sturdily resent the impeachment of it. In the other, it 
presents a being higher than even they can boast; a fear- 
fully great being ; great in his evil will, his demoniacal 
passions, his contempt of fear, the splendor of his degra- 
dation, and the magnificence of his woe. 

It is this latter view of the picture to which, at the 
present time, I propose to call your attention, exhibiting, — 

Tlie dignity of man, as revealed by the ruin he makes in his 
fall and apostacy from God. 

It has been the way of many, in our time, to magnify 
humariity, or the dignity of human nature, by tracing its 
capabilities and the tokens it reveals of a natural affinity 
with God and truth. They distinguish lovely instincts 
powers and properties allied to God, aspirations reaching 



DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 51 

after God; many virtues, according to tie common use of 
that term ; many beautiful and graceful charities ; and, by 
such kind of evidences, or proofs, they repel, sometimes 
with scorn, what they call the libelous, or even the insult- 
ing doctrine of total depravity. And this they do, as I 
will add, not without some show of reason, when the fact 
of our depravity is asserted in a manner that excludes the 
admission of any such high aspirations and amiable pro- 
perties, or virtues, as we certainly discover in human con 
duct, apart from any gifts and graces of religion. And it 
must be admitted that some teachers have given occasion 
for this kind of offense ; not observing the compatibility 
of great aspirations and majestic affinities with a state of 
deep spiritual thraldom; assuming, also, with as little 
right, the want of all appropriate sensibilities and recep- 
tivities for the truth, as a necessary inference from the 
complete destitution of holiness. They make out, in this 
manner, a doctrine of human depravity, in which there is 
no proper humanity left. 

I am not required by my subject to settle the litigation 
between these two extremes ; one of which makes the gos- 
pel unnecessary, because there is no depravation to restore; 
and the other of which makes it impossible, because there 
is nothing left to which any holy appeal can be made ; but 
I undertake, in partial disregard of both, to show the es- 
sential greatness and dignity of man from the ruin itself 
which he becomes; confident of this, that in no other 
point of view, will he prove the spiritual sublimity of hifl 
nature so convincingly. 

. Nor is it any thing new, or a turn more ingenious than 
just, that we undertake to raise our conceptions of human 



52 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

nature in this manner; for it is in just tins way that, we 
are accustomed to get our measures and form our concep- 
tions of many things; — of the power, for example, of 
ancient djmasties and the magnificence of ancient works 
and cities. Falling thus, it may be, on patches of paved 
road here and there, on lines leading out divergently from 
ancient Eome, uncovering and decyphering the mile-stones 
by their sides, marked with postal distances, here for 
Britain, here for Germany, here for Ephesus and Babylon, 
here for Brundusium, the port of the Appian Way, and 
so for Egypt, JSTumidia and the provinces of the sun ; im- 
agining the couriers flying back and forth, bearing the 
mandates of the central authority to so many distant na- 
tions, followed by the military legions trailing on to exe- 
cute them ; we receive an impression of the empire, from 
these scattered vestiges, which almost no words of historic 
description could give us. So, if we desire to form some 
opinion of the dynasty of the Pharaohs, of whom history 
gives us but the faintest remembrances and obscurest tra- 
ditions, we have only to look on the monumental mount- 
ains, piled up to molder on the silent plain of Egypt, and 
these dumb historians in stone will show us more of that 
vast and populous empire, measuring by the amount of real- 
ized impression, more of the imperial haughtiness of the 
monarchs, more of the servitude of their people and of the 
captive n^riads of the tributary nations, than even Hero- 
dotus and Strabo, history and geograph y, together. 

The same is true, even more strikingly, of ancient 
cities. Though described by historians, in terms of defi- 
nite measurement, with their great structures and defenses 
and the royal splendor of their courts, we form no suffi- 
cient conception of their grandeur, till we look upon their 



SHOWN FROM ITS RUINS. 53 

ruins. Even the eloquence of Homer describing the glory 
and magnificence of Thebes, the vast circuit of its walls, 
its hundred gates, and the chariots of war pouring out of 
all, to vanquish and hold in subjection the peoples of as 
many nations, yields only a faint, unimpressive conception 
of the city ; but, to pass through the ruins of Karnac and 
Luxor, a vast desolation of temples and pillared avenues 
that dwarf all the present structures of the world, solemn, 
silent and hoary, covered with historic sculptures that re- 
late the conquest of kingdoms — a journey to pass through, 
a maze in which even comprehension is lost — this reveals 
a fit conception of the grandest city of the world as no 
words could describe it. Beheld and judged by the majesty 
of its ruins, there is a poetry in the stones surpassing all 
majesty of song. So, when the prophet Jonah, endeavor- 
ing, as he best can, to raise some adequate opinion of the 
greatness of Nineveh, declares that it is an exceeding 
great city, of three daj's' journey; and, when Nahum 
follows, magnifying its splendor in terms of high descrip- 
tion that correspond ; still, so ambiguous and faint is the 
impression made, that many were doubting whether, after 
all, "the exceeding great city" was any thing more than 
a vast inclosure of gardens and pasture grounds for sheep, 
where a moderate population subsisted under the protec- 
tion of a wall. No one had any proper conception of the 
city till just now, when a traveler and antiquary digs into 
the tomb where it lies, opens to view, at points many miles 
asunder, its temples and palaces, drags out the heavy 
sculptures, shows the inscriptions, collects the tokens of 
art and splendor, and says, "this is Nineveh, the 'exceeding 
great city,'" and then, judging of its extent from the vast 

and glorious ruin, we begin to have some fit impression 

5* 



54 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

of its magnitude and splendor. And so it is with 
Babylon, Ephesus, Tadmor of the desert, Baalbee and the 
nameless cities and pyramids of the extinct American 
race. All great ruins are but a name for greatness in 
rains, and we see the magnitude of the structure in that 
of the ruin made by it, in its fall. 

So it is with man. Our most veritable, though saddest 
impressions of his greatness, as a creature, we shall derive 
from the magnificent rum he displays. In that ruin we 
shall distinguish fallen powers, that lie as broken pillars 
on the ground ; temples of beauty, whose scarred and shat- 
tered w^alls still indicate their ancient, original glory; sum- 
mits covered with broken stones, infested by asps, where 
the palaces of high thought and great aspiration stood, 
and righteous courage went up to maintain the citadel of 
the mind, — all a ruin now, " archangel ruined." 

And exactly this, I conceive, is the legitimate impres- 
sion of the scripture representations of man, as apostate 
from duty and God. Thoughtfully regarded, all exagger- 
ations and contending theories apart, it is as if they were 
showing us the original dignity of man, from the magnifi- 
cence of the ruin in which he lies. How sublime a crea- 
ture must that be. call him either man or demon, who is 
able to confront the Almighty and tear himself away from 
his throne. And, as if to forbid our taking his deep 
misery and shame as tokens of contempt, imagining that 
a creature so humiliated is inherently weak and low, the 
first men are shown us living out a thousand years of 
lustful energy, and braving the Almighty in strong 
defiance to the last. " The earth also is corrupt before 
God, and the earth is filled with violence/' We look, as 
it were, upon a race of Titans, broken loose from order 



SHOTX FKOil ITS BUINS. 55 

and making war upon God and each, other; beholding, in 
their outward force, a type of that original majesty which 
pertains to the moral nature of a being, endowed with a 
self- determining liberty, capable of choices against God, 
and thus of a character in evil that shall be his own. They 
fill the earth, even up to the sky, with wrath and the de- 
moniacal tumult of their wrongs, till God can suffer them 
no longer, sending forth his flood to sweep them from the 
earth. So of the remarkable picture given by Paul, in the 
~ chapter of the epistle to the Eomans. In one view 
we are disgusted, in another shocked, doubting whether it 
presents a creature most foolish and vile or most sublimely 
impious and wicked : and coming out, finally, where the 
chapter ends — " who knowing the judgment of God that 
they which commit such things are worthy of death, not 
only do the same but have pleasure in them that do 
them" — there to confess the certain greatness of a being 
whose audacity is so nearly infinite, whose adherence to 
the league with evil is maintained with a pertinacity so 
damnably desperate and relentless. And the picture of the 
text correspoi; ^ n g n ° impression of a merely feeble 

and vile creature, but of a creature rather most terrible 
and swift; destructive, fierce and fearless; miserable in his 
greatness; great as in evil. Their throat is an open sepul- 
chre ; with their tongues they have used deceit ; the poison 
of asps is under their lips ; whose mouth is full of cursing 
and bitten: 38; their feet are swift to shed blood. Des- 
. and misery are in their way ; and the way of 
they not known ; there is no fear of God before 

h eves. 

■ 

But we come to the nun as it is, and we look upon it 



56 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

with our own eyee, to receive the true, original impression 
for ourselves. 

We look, first of all, upon the false religions of the 
world; pompous and costly rites transacted before croco- 
diles and onions ; magnificent temples built over all mon- 
keyish and monstrous creatures carved by men's hands ; 
children offered up, by their mothers, in fire, or in water; 
kings offered on the altars, by their people, to propitiate a 
wooden image; gorgeous palaces and trappings of bar- 
baric majesty, studded all over with beetles in gold, or 
precious stones, to serve as a protection against pestilences, 
poisons and accidents. I can not fill out a picture that so 
nearly fills the world. Doubtless it is a picture of ruin — 
yet of a ruin how visibly magnificent. For, how high a 
nature must that be, how intensely allied to what is divine, 
that it must prepare such pomps, incur such sacrifices, and 
can elevate such trifles of imposture to a place of rever- 
ence. If we say that, in all this, it is feeling after 
God if haply it may find him, which in one view is the 
truth, then how inextinguishable and grand are those re- 
ligious instincts by which it is allied to the holy, the infi- 
nite, the eternal, but invisible one. 

The wars of the world yield a similar impression. What 
opinion should we have of the energy, ferocity and fear- 
ful passion of a race of animals, could any such be found, 
who marshal themselves by the hundred thousand, march- 
ing across kingdoms and deserts to fight, and strewing 
leagues of ground with a covering of dead, before they 
yield the victory. One race there is that figure in these 
heroics of war, in a small way, viz., the tiny race of ants; 
whom God has made a spectacle to mock the glory and 
magnificence of human wars; lest, carried away bv so 



SHOWX FROM ITS RUINS. 57 

man 7 brave shows and by tlie applauses of the drunken 
ages of the world, we pass, undiscovered, the meanness and 
littleness of that selfish ambition, or pride,. by which hu- 
man wars are instigated. These are men such as history, 
in all past ages, shows them to be ; swift to shed blood, 
swifter than the tiger race, and more terrible. Cities and 
empires are swept by their terrible marches, and become 
a desolation in their path. Destruction and misery are in 
their ways — what destruction, misery, how deep and 
long ! And what shall we think of any creature of God 
displayed in signs like these. Plainly enough he is a crea- 
ture in ruins, but how magnificent a creature ! Mean as 
the ant in his passions, but erecting, on the desolations he 
makes, thrones of honor and renown, and raising himself 
into the attitude of a god, before the obsequious ages of 
mankind ; for who of us can live content, as we are tem- 
pered, without some hero to admire and worship? 

Consider again the persecutions of the good ; fires for the 
saints of all ages, dungeons for the friends of liberty and 
benefactors of their times, poison for Socrates, a cross for 
Jesus Christ. What does it mean? What face shall we 
put on this outstanding demonstration of the world ? No 
other but this, that cursing and bitterness, the poison even 
of asps, and more, is entered into the heart of man. He 
hates with a diabolical hatred. Feeling "how awful good- 
ness is/' the sight of it rouses him to madness, and he will 
not stop till he has tasted blood. And what a being is 
this that can be stung with so great madness, by the spec- 
tacle of a good and holy life. The fiercest of animals are 
capable of no such devilish instigation ; because they are 
too low to be capable of goodness, or even of the thought 
But here is a creature who can not bear the reminder even 



58 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

of good, or of any thing above the ruin where his deso- 
lated glory lies. how great is the nature which is 
capable of this dire phrenzy. 

The great characters of the world furnish another strik- 
ing proof of the transcendent quality of human nature, 
by the dignity they are able to connect even with their 
littleness and meanness. On a small island of the southern 
Atlantic, is shut up a remarkable prisoner, wearing him- 
self out there in a feeble mixture of peevishness and jeal- 
ousy, solaced b}^ no great thoughts and no heroic spirit ; 
a kind of dotard before the time, killing and consuming 
himself by the intense littleness into which he has shrunk. 
And this is the great conqueror of the modern world, the 
man whose name is the greatest of modern names, or, some 
will sa}^, of all names the human world has pronounced ; a 
man, nevertheless, who carried his greatest victories and 
told his meanest lies in close proximity, a character as des- 
titute of private magnanimity, as he was remarkable for 
the stupendous powers of his understanding and the more 
stupendous and imperial leadership of his will. How 
great a being must it be, that makes a poiut of so great 
dignity before the world, despite of so much that is really 
little and contemptible. 

But he is not alone. The immortal Kepler, piloting 
science into the skies, and comprehending the vastncss of 
heaven, for the first time, in the fixed embrace of definite 
thought, only proves the magnificence of man as a ruin, 
when you discover the strange ferment of irritability and 
u superstition wild," in which his great thoughts are brewed 
and his mighty life dissolved. 

iSo also Bacon proves the amazing wealth and grand* 
ear of the human soul only the more sublimely that 



SHOWX FROM ITS RUINS 59 

living in an element of cunning, servility and ingratitude, 
and dying under the shame of a convict, he is yet able to 
dignify disgrace by the stupendous majesty of his genius, 
and commands the reverence even of the world, as to one of 
its sublimest benefactors. And the poet's stinging line— 

"The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," 

pictures, only with a small excess of satire, the magnifi- 
cence of ruin comprehended in the man. 

Probably no one of mankind has raised himself to a 
higher pitch of renown by the superlative attributes of 
genius displayed in his writings, than the great English 
dramatist ; flowering out, nevertheless, into such eminence 
of glory, on a compost of fustian, buffoonery and other 
vile stuff, which he so magnificently covers with splendor 
and irradiates with beauty, that disgust itself is lost in the 
vehemence of praise. And so Ave shall find, almost uni- 
versally, that the greatness of the world's great men, is 
proved by the inborn qualities that tower above the ruins 
of weakness and shame, in which they appear, and out of 
which, as solitary pillars and dismantled temples they rise. 

But we must look more directly into the contents of hu- 
man nature, and the internal ruin by which they are dis- 
played. And here you may notice, first of all, the sublime 
vehemence of the passions. What a creature must that 
be, who, out of mere hatred, or revenge, will deliberately 
take the life of a fellow man, and then dispatch his own to 
avoid the ignominy of a public execution. Suppose there 
might be found some tiger that, for the mere bitterness of 
Lis grudge against some other whelp of bis mother, springs 
upon him in his sleep and rends him in pieces, and then 



60 DIGNITV OF HUMAN NATUftE 

deliberately tears open his own throat to escape the venge- 
ance of the family. No tiger of the desert is ever insti- 
gated by any so intense and terrible passion, that, for the 
sweetness of revenge, is willing afterward to rush on 
death itself. This kind of phrenzy plainly belongs to 
none but a creature immortal, an archangel ruined, in 
(vhose breast a fire of hell may burn high enough and 
deep enough to scorch down even reason and the innate 
love of life. Or take the passion of covetousness, gener- 
ally regarded as one essentially mean and degraded. After 
all, how great a creature must that be, who is goaded by 
a zeal of acquisition so restless, so self-sacrificing, so insa- 
tiable. The poor, gaunt miser, starving for want, that he 
may keep the count of his gold — whom do we more natur- 
ally pity and despise. And yet he were even the great- 
est of heroes, if he could deny himself with so great pa- 
tience, in a good and holy cause. How grand a gift that 
immortality, how deep those gulfs of want in the soul, 
that instigate a madness so desolating to character, a self- 
immolation so relentless, a niggard suffering so sublime. 
The same is true even of the licentious and gluttonous 
lusts and their loathsome results. No race of animals can 
show the parallel of such vices ; because they are none of 
them instigated by a nature so insatiable, so essentially 
great, in the magnificence of wants that find no good to 
satisfy their cravings. The ruin we say is beastly, but the 
beasts are clear of the comparison ; it requires a mold vaster 
than theirs, to burst the limits of nature in excesses so 
disgusting. 

Consider again the wild mixtures of thought, displayed 
both in the waking life and the dreams of mankind. How 
grand I how mean! how sudden the leap from one to the 



SHOWN FKOM ITS RUINS 61 

other! how inscrutable the succession! how defiant of or- 
derly control! It is as if the soul were a thinking ruin; 
which it verily is. The angel and the demon life appeaT 
to be contending in it. The imagination revels in beauty 
exceeding all the beauty of things, wails in images dire 
and monstrous, wallows in murderous and base sugges- 
tions that shame our inward dignity; so that a great park 
of the study and a principal art of life, is to keep out 
decency, by a wise selection from what we think and a careful 
suppression of the remainder. A diseased and crazy mix- 
ture, such as represents a ruin, is the form of our inward 
experience. And yet, a ruin how magnificent, one which 
a buried Xineveh, or a desolated Thebes can parallel only 
in the faintest degree ; comprehending all that is purest, 
brightest, most divine, even that which is above the firma- 
ment itself; all that is worst, most sordid, meanest, most 
deformed. 

Xotice, also, the significance of remorse. How great a 
creature must that be that, looking down upon itself from 
some high, summit in itself, some throne of truth and 
judgment which no devastation of order can reach, with- 
ers in relentless condemnation of itself, gnaws and chas- 
tises itself in the sense of what it is ! Call it a ruin, as it 
plainly is, there rises out of the desolated wreck of its 
former splendor, that which indicates and measures the 
sublimity of the original temple. The conscience standa 
^rect, resisting all the ravages of violence and decay, and 
by this, we distinguish the temple of God that was; a soul 
divinely gifted, made to be the abode of his spirit, the 
vehicle of his power, the mirror of his glory. A creature 
of remorse is a divine creatine of necessity, only it is tii" 
Wreck of a divinity that was. 



62 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

So again, yon may conceive the greatness of man, by 
the ruin he makes, if you advert to the dissonance and 
obstinacy of his evil will. It is dissonant as being out of 
harmony with God and the world, and all beside in the 
soul itself; viz., the reason, the conscience, the wants, the 
hopes, and even the remembrances of the soul. How great 
a creature is it that, knowing God, can set itself off from 
God and resist him, can make itself a unit, separate from 
all beings beside, and maintain a persistent rebellion even 
against its own convictions, fears and aspirations. Like a 
Pharaoh it sits on its Egyptian throne, quailing in dark- 
ness, under the successive fears and judgments of life, re- 
lenting for the moment, then gathering itself up again to 
re-assert the obstinacy of its pride, and die, it may be, in 
its evil. What a power is this, capable of a dominion 
how sublime, a work and sphere how transcendent ! If 
sin is weak, if it is mean, little, selfish and deformed, and 
we are ready to set humanity down as a low and paltry 
thing of nothing worth, how terrible and tragic in its evil 
grandeur does it appear, when we turn to look upon its 
defiance of God, and the desperate obstinacy of its war- 
fare. "Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they 
which commit such things are worth}' of death, not only 
do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Or 
as we have it in the text, — There is no fear of God before 
their eyes. In one view there is fear enough, the soul is 
all its life long haunted by this fear, but there is a despera- 
tion of will that tramples fear and makes it as though it 
were not. 

Consider once more the religious aspirations and capaci- 
ties of religious attraction that are garnered up, and still 
live in the ruins of humanity. Row plain it is, in all the 



SHOWX FROil ITS RUINS. 63 

most forward demonstrations of the race, that man is a 
creature for religion ; a creature secretly allied to God hin> 
self, as the needle is to the pole, attracted toward Gocl 
aspiring consciously, or unconsciously, to the friendship 
and love of God. Neither is it true that, in his fallen 
state, he has no capacity left of religious affection, or at- 
traction., till it is first new created in him. All his capaci- 
ties of love and truth are in him still, cnly buried and 
stifled by the smoldering ruin in which he lies. There 

capacity in him still to be moved and drawn, to be 
charmed and melted by the divine love and beauty. The 
old affinity lives, though smothered in selfishness and lust, 
and even proves itself in sorrowful evidence, when he bowa 
himself down to a reptile or an idol. He will do his most 
expensive works for religion. There is a deep panting 
stall in his bosom, however suppressed, that cries inaudibly 
and sobs with secret longing after God. Hence the sub- 
lime unhappiness of the race. There is a vast, immortal 
want stirring on the world and forbidding it to rest. In 
the cursing and bitterness, in the deceit of tongues, in the 
poison of asps, in the swiftness to blood, in all the destruc- 
tion and misery of the world's ruin, there is yet a vast in- 
satiate hunger for the good, the true, the holy, the divine, 
and a great part of the misery of the ruin is that it is so 

r a ruin; a desolation of that which can not utterly 
perish, and still lives, asserting its defrauded rights and re- 
claiming its lost glories. And therefore it is that life be- 
comes an experience to the race so tragic in its character, 
so dark and wild, so bitter, so incapable of peace. The 
way of peace we can not know, till we find our peace, 
where our immortal aspirations place it, in the fullness and 

friendly eternity of God. 



64 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

Regarding man then, as immersed in evil, a being in 
disorder, a spiritual intelligence in a state of ruin, we dero« 
gate nothing from his dignity. Small conception has any 
one of the dignity of human nature, who conceives it only 
uii the side of praise, or as set off by the figments of a 
merely natural virtue. As little could he apprehend the 
tragic sublimity of Hamlet, considered only as an amiable 
son ingenuously hurt by the insult done his father's name 
and honor. The character is great, not here, but in its 
wildness and its tragic mystery ; delicate and fierce, vin- 
dictive and cool, shrewd and terrible, a reasonable and a 
reasoning madness, more than we can solve, all that we 
can feel. And so it is that we discover the true majesty 
of human nature itself, in the tragic grandeur of its dis- 
orders, nowhere else. Nothing do we know of its meas- 
ures, regarded in the smooth plausibilities and the respect- 
able airs of good breeding, and worldly virtue. It is only 
as a lost being that man appears to be truly great. Judge 
him by the ruin he makes, wander among the shattered 
pillars and fallen towers of his majesty, behold the immor- 
tal and eternal vestiges, study his passions, thoughts, aspir- 
ations, woes ; behold the destruction and misery that are 
in his ways, — destruction how sublime, misery how deep, 
clung to with how great pertinacity, and then say, — this 
is man, this is the dignity of human nature. It will kin- 
dle no pride in you, stimulate no pompous conceit, but it 
will reveal a terror, discover a shame, speak a true con- 
viction, and, it may be, draw forth a tear. 

Having reached this natural limit of our subject, ]et ug 
pause a moment, and look about us on some of the prao 
tical issues to which it is related. 



SH0WX FROM US RUINS. 6£ 

It is getting to be a great hope of our time, that sccietj 
is going to slide into sometliing better, by a course of natu- 
ral progress ; by the advance of education, by great public 
reforms, by courses of self-culture and philanthropic prac- 
tice We have a kind of new gospel that corresponds ; a 
gospel which preaches not so much a faith in God's salva- 
tion as a faith in human nature ; an attenuated moralizing 
gospel that proposes development, not regeneration ; show- 
ing- men how to stow better, how to cultivate their amia- 
ble instincts, how to be rational in their own liokt and 
govern themselves by their own power. Sometimes it is 
given as the true problem, how to reform the shape and 
re-construct the style of their heads, and even this it is ex- 
pected they will certainly be able to do ! Alas that we are 
taken, or can be, with so great folly. How plain it is that 
no such gospel meets our want. TThat can it do for 
us but turn us away, more and more fatally, from that 
gospel of the Son of God, which is our only hope. Man 
as a ruin, going after development, and progress, and 
philanthropy, and social culture, and, by this fire-fly glim- 
mer, to make a day of glory ! And this is the doctrine 
that proposes shortly to restore society, to settle the passion, 
regenerate the affection, re-glorify the thought, fill the as- 
piration of a desiring and disjointed world! As if any 
being but God Lad power to grapple with these human 
disorders ; as if man, or society, crazed and maddened by 
the demoniacal frenzy of sin, were going to rebuild the 
state of order, and re-construct the shattered harmony of 
nature, by such kind of desultory counsel and unsteady 
application as it can manage to enforce in its own cause. 
going to do this miracle by its science, its compacts, and 
self-executed reforms! As socn will the desolations of 

6* 



66 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

Karnac gather up tlieir fragments and re-construct the pro* 
portions out of which they have fallen. No, it is not 
progress, not reforms that are wanted as any principal thing. 
Nothing meets our case, but to come unto God and be 
medicated in him ; to be born of God, and so, by his re- 
generative power, to be set in heaven's own order. He 
alone can re-build the ruin, he alone set up the glorious 
temple of the mind; and those divine affinities in us that 
raven with immortal hunger — he alone can satisfy them 
in the bestowment of himself. 

And this brings me to speak of another point, where the 
subject unfolded carries an important application. The 
great difficulty with Christianity in our time is, that, as a 
fact, or salvation, it is too great for belief. After all our 
supposed discoveries of dignity in human nature, we have 
commonly none but the meanest opinion of man. How 
can we imagine or believe that any such history as that of 
Jesus Christ is a fact, or that the infinite God has trans- 
acted any such wonder for man, a being so far below his 
rational concern, or the range of his practical sympathy? 
God manifest in the flesh ! God in Christ reconciling the 
world unto himself! the birth of the manger! the life of 
miracle ! the incarnate dying ! and the world darkening in 
funeral grief around the mighty sufferer's cross! — it is ex- 
travagant, out of proportion, — who can believe it ? Any 
one, I answer, who has not lost the magnitude of man. 
No work of God holds a juster proportion than this great 
mystery of godliness, and if we did but understand the 
great mystery of ungodliness we should think so. No 
man will ever have any difficulty in believing the work of 
Christ who has not lost the measures of humanity. But 



SHOWN FROM ITS RUINS. 67 

for this, no man will ever think it reason to deny his di- 
vinity, explain away his incarnation, or reject the mystery 
of his cross. To restore this tragic fall required a tragic 
salvation. Nor did ever any sinner who had come to 
himself, felt the bondage of his sin, trembled in the sense of 
his terrible disorders, groaned over the deep gulfs of want 
opened by his sin, struggled with himself to compose the 
bitter struggles of his nature, heaved in throes of anguish 
to emancipate himself, — no such person, however deep iD 
philosophy, or scepticism, ever thought, for one moment, 
that Christ was too great a Saviour. 0, it was a divine 
Saviour, an almighty Saviour, coming out from God's eter- 
nity, that he wanted ! none but such was sufficient! Him 
he could believe in, just because he was great, — equal to 
the measures of his want, able to burst the bondage of his 
sin. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten sod, that w r hosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but should have everlasting life." — 0, it is the word 
of reason to his soul. He believes, and on this rock, as a 
rock of adequate salvation, he rests. 

Once more, it is another and important use of the sub- 
ject we have here presented, that the magnitude and real 
importance of the soul are discovered in it, as nowhere 
else. For it is not by any computations of reason, but in 
your wild disorders, your suppressed affinities for God, the 
distempers and storms of your passions, and the magnifi- 
cent chaos of your immortality, that you will get the tru- 
est opinion of your consequence to yourselves. Just that 
which makes you most oblivious and blindest to your own 
significance, ought to make jou most aware of it and press 
you most earnestly to God. T know not how it is, but the 



63 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE 

soul appears under sin, all selfish as it is, to shrink and 
grow small in its own sight. Perhaps it is clue, in part, to 
the consciousness we have, in sin, of moral littleness and 
meanness. We commonly speak of it in figures of this 
kind, we call it low and weak and degraded, and fall into 
the impression that these words are real measures of our 
natural magnitude. Whereas, in another sense, the sin 
we speak of is mighty, terrible, God-defying and triumph* 
ant. Let this thought come to you, my friends, as well as 
the other, and if sin is morally little, let it be, in power, 
mighty as it really is. The shadow by which most con- 
vincingly your true height is measured, is that which is 
cast athwart the abyss of your shame and spiritual igno- 
miny. Just here it is that you will get your most verita- 
ble impressions of your immortality ; even as you get youi 
best impression of armies, not by the count of numbers, 
but by the thunder-shock of battle, and the carnage of the 
field when it is over. We try all other methods, but in 
vain, to rouse in men's bosoms some barely initial sense of 
their consequence to themselves, and get some hold, in 
that manner, of the stupendous immortality Christ recog- 
nizes in them and throws off his glory to redeem. We 
take the guage of your power as a mincl, showing what 
this power of mind has been able, in the explorations of 
matter and light and air, of sea and land, and the distant 
fields of heaven, to do. We display its inventions, recount 
its victories over nature. We represent, as vividly as we 
can, and by computations as vast and far-reaching as we 
are master of, in our finite arithmetic, the meaning of the 
word, eternity, All in vain. What are you still but the 
insect of some present honr. in which you live and flutter 
and die? But here we take another method, we call you 



SHOWN FEOM ITS RUINS. 69 

to the "battle field of sin. "We show you the vestigea 
This we say is man, the fallen principality. In these tragic 
desolations of intelligence and genius, of passion, pride 
and sorrow, behold the import of his eternity. Be no 
mere spectator, turn the glass we give you round upon 
yourself, look into the ruin of your own conscious spirit, 
and see how much it signifies, both that you are a sinner 
and a man. Here, within the soul's gloomy chamber, the 
loosened passions rage and chafe, impatient of their law ; 
here huddle on the wild and desultory thoughts; here the 
imagination crowds in shapes of glory and disgust, tokens 
both and mockeries of its own creative power, no longer 
in the keeping of reason ; here sits remorse scowling and 
biting her chain ; here creep out the fears, a meagre and 
pale multitude ; here drives on the will in his chariot of 
war ; here lie trampled the great aspirations, groaning in 
immortal thirst ; here the blasted affections weeping out 
their life in silent injury; all that you see without, in the 
wars, revenges and the crazed religions of the world, is 
faithfully represented in the appalling disorders of your 
own spirit. And yet, despite all this, a fact which over- 
tops and crowns all other evidence, you are trying and 
contriving still to be happy — a happy ruin ! The eternal 
destiny is in you, and you can not break loose from it. 
With your farthing bribes you try to hush your stupen- 
dous wants, with your single drops, (drops of gall and not 
of water,) to fill the ocean of your immortal aspirations. 
You call on desti action to help you, and misery to give 
you comfort, and complain that destruction and misery are 
still in all your ways. 0, this great and mighty soul, were 
it something less, you might find what to do with it ; charm 
it with the jingle of a golden toy, house it in a safe with 



70 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

ledgers and stocks, take it about on journeys to see and be 
seen! Any thing would please it and bring it contend 
But it is the godlike soul, capable of rest in nothing but 
God ; able to be filled and satisfied with nothing but his 
fullness and the confidence of his friendship. What man 
that lives in sin can know it, or conceive it ; who believe 
what it is ! 

0, thou Prince of Life ! come in thy great salvation to 
these blinded and lost men, and lay thy piercing question 
to their ear, — What shall it profit a man to gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? Breathe, breathe on these 
majestic ruins, and rouse to life again, though it be but for 
one hour, the forgotten sense of their eternity, their lost 
eternity. 

Even so, your lost eternity. The great salvation 
coming, then, is not too great; nought else, or less could 
suffice. For if there be any truth that can fitly appall you, 
rive you with conviction, drive you home to God, dissolve 
you in tears of repentance, it is here, when you discover 
yourself and your terrible misdoings, in the ruins of your 
desolated majesty. In these awful and scarred vestiges, 
too, what type is given you of that other and final ruin, 
of which Christ so kindly and faithfully warned you, 
when, describing the house you are building on these 
treacherous sands, he showed the fatal storm beating 
vehemently against it, with only this one 'issue possible — 
And immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was 
great. 



IV. 

THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

Luke xv. 17. — "And when he came to himself] lie said, 
How many hired servants of my father s have tread enough 
and to spare, and I perish with hunger J 1 

This gentleman's son that was, and is now a swine-herd, 
brings his meditation to a most natural and fit conclusion. 
His low occupation, and the husks on which he has been 
feeding to save his life, recall his father's house, and the 
hired servants there that have bread enough and to spare, 
and, no longer able to contain himself, he cries, in bitter 
desolation, " I perish with hunger." And so, in this story 
of the prodigal, Christ teaches all men their hunger, by 
means of that on which they feed, and the necessar}^ base- 
ness of their sin, by the lowness of the objects to which 
they descend for their life. 

The swine, according to Jewish opinion, is an unclean 
animal, not to be eaten as food, and therefore is not raised, 
except by those idolaters and men of no religion, who live 
as outcasts in their country. Hence it is looked upon as 
the lowest and most abject of all occupations to be a swine- 
herd. He is the disgust of all men, an unclean character, 
who is, among other men, what the swine is among other 
animals. He may not enter the temple, or even come 
near it. 

By the husks on which the prodigal is said, in his hun- 
ger, to have fed himself, we are not to understand exactly 
what is meant by the English word husks, but a certain 



72 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

fruit, the fruit of the carob tree, which grows in pods ar.d 
has a mealy and sweet taste. It is described by Galen a3 
a "woody kind of food, creating bile, and hard of diges- 
tion;" useful, as acorns are with us, in the feeding of swiiie, 
and sometimes eaten by the poorer sort of men, to escape 
starvation. Still it can work no injury, since this kind of 
fruit is unknown to us, to retain the word husJzs ; a word 
that comes nearer producing the true impression of the 
parable, which is the principal thing, than any other which 
orient be substituted. 

The important thing to be noted, as regards my present 
object, is the prodigal's hunger. About this central point, 
or fact, all the other incidents of the parable are gathered. 
And by this wretched figure of destitution, the Saviour of 
the world represents man under sin ; he is one who for- 
sakes the life of duty and religion, to go after earthly 
things. He is, therefore, reduced to the lowest condition 
of want, or spiritual hunger. His food is not the proper 
food of a man, but of a swine rather. A high-born crea- 
ture, as being in God's image, he descends to occupations 
that are unclean, and feeds his starving nature on that 
which belongs only to a reprobate, or unclean class of ani- 
mals. In this lot of deep debasement and bitter privation, 
there is no language in which he may so naturally vent his 
misery as when he cries, " I perish with hunger." 

"What I propose, then, for our meditation, is tho truth 
here expressed, that a life separated from God is a life of 
bitter hunger^ or even of spiritual starvation. 

My object will be, not so much to prove this truth as to 
make it apparent, or visible, as a real fact, by means of 
appropriate illustrations. But, in order to this, it will be 
necessarv, 



THE HUXG-EK OF THE SOUL. 73 

L To exhibit tlie true grounds of the fact stated ; for, 
as w r how and for what reasons the life of sin 

must be a life of hunger, we shall see the more readily 
and clearly the force of those illnstrationSj by which the 
fact is exhibited. 

The great principle that underlies the whole subject -and 
all the facts pertaining to it is, that the soul is a creature 
that order to its sa: i, as truly as the hi 

No principle is more certain, and yet there is none so 
generally overlooked, or hidden from the sight of men. 

Of course it is not meant, when the soul is said to be a 
creature wanting food, that it receives by a literal mastica- 
tion, and has a palate to be gratified in what it receives. 
I only mean to universalize the great truth that pertains 
to all vital creatures and organs ; viz., that they differ from 
all dead substances, stones for example, in the feet that 
they subsist in a healthy state of vital energy and develop- 
ment, by receiving, appropriating, or feeding upon some- 
thing out of themselves. Every tree and plant is, in this 
new, a feeding creature, and grows by that which feeds it , 
that, viz., which it derives from the air and clouds, from 
the soil and the changing influence of day and night. In 
this larger sense, every organ of the body is a receptive 
and feeding organ. Sometimes it is fed by other org 
which prepare and furnish to it the food that is needful for 
growth and subsistence. In this manner even the 
bones are feeding creatures. So the senses are fed by 
elements appropriate, the ear by sounds, the eye by the 
light. And so true is this, that an eye shut up in total 
darkness, and probably an ear cut off from all sound, 
finally die, or become an exterminated sense ; even as that 
whole tribe of fishes, di£ d in the cave, are fonn 

7 



74 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

have no eyes. Now what I mean to say is, that all the.se 
vital creatures, vegetable and animal, are only so many 
types of the soul, which is the highest, purest form of 
vital being we know; and that, as they all subsist by 
feeding on something not in themselves, and die for hun- 
ger without that food, just so the soul is a creature wanting 
food, and fevering itself in bitter hunger when that food 
is denied. 

Hence it is that, in that most unnatural of all modes of 
punishment, regarded unaccountably with so great favor 
by many, the punishment I mean of absolute solitary con- 
finement, a very large proportion of the prisoners become 
idiotic. Cut off from all the living sights and sounds, the 
faces of friends, the voices of social interchange, and the 
works and interests of life ; shut away thus from all that 
enters into feeling, or quickens intelligence, or exercises 
judgment, or nerves the will to action, the soul has no 
longer any thing to feed upon, and, for want of food, it 
dies, — dies into blank idiocy. 

Neither let this want of food in souls be regarded as a 
merely philosophic truth, or discovery. It is a truth so 
natural to the feeling of mankind, that it breaks into lan- 
guage every hour, and appears and re-appears in the scrip- 
ture, in so many forms, that I can not stay to enumerate 
half of them. Job brings it forward, by a direct and 
simple comparison, when he says, — For the ear trieth 
words, as the mouth tasteth meat, — where he means by 
the ear, you perceive, not the outward but the inward ear 
of the understanding. So the Psalmist says, — My soul shall 
be satisfied, as with marrow and fatness. And so also the 
prophet, beholding his apostate countrymen dying for 
hunger and thirst in their sins, calls to tnem saying. — Ho, 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. - «5 

every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he 
that hath no money, come ye buy and eat. Wherefore do 
you spend money for that which is not bread, and your 
labor for that which satisfieth not ? Hearken diligently un- 
to me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your sou] 
delight itself in fatness. In the same way, an apostle 
speaks of them that have tasted the good word of God, 
and the powers of the world to come ; and another, of 
them that have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and there- 
fore desire the sincere milk of the word, that they may 
grow thereby. 

True, these are all figures of speech, transferred from 
the feeding of the body to that of the soul. But they are 
transferred because they have a fitness to be transferred. 
The analogy of the soul is so close to that of the body, 
that it speaks of its hunger, its food, its fullness, and 
growth, and fatness, under the images it derives from the 
body. 

Hence you will observe that our blessed Lord appears 
to have always the feeling, that he has come down into a 
realm of hungry, famishing souls. You see this in the 
parable of the prodigal son, and that of the feast or sup- 
per. Hence also that very remarkable discourse in the 
6th chapter of John, where he declares himself as the liv- 
ing bread that came down from heaven — that a man may 
eat thereof and not die. AVhoso eateth my flesh and 
drinketh my blood hath eternal life. My flesh is meat 
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my 
flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him. 
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, 
so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. 

Many, I believe, are not able to read this language 



76 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

without a kind of revolted feeling. What can it mean 
that they are to live by eating Christ? There is no diffi- 
culty, I answer, in the language, save in getting at the 
rational and true sense of the figure en: ployed, and, when 
this is done, it becomes language strikingly significant. 
Suppose it were said that a tree can live, only as it eats the 
air and the light ; the meaning, of course, would not be 
that it takes these elements by mastication, but that it has 
such a nature that it takes them into itself and gets a nu- 
triment of growth out of them, and that without them, so 
appropriated, it would die. So, when Christ says, — I will 
manifest myself unto him, — we will come and make our 
abode with him, — he means that he will be so received 
and appropriated by the soul as to be its light, the breath- 
ing of its life, that which feeds it internally. He assumes, 
in all that he says, that as the tree has a nature requiring 
to be fed by air and light, so the soul has a nature inhe- 
rently related to God, the Infinite Spirit. Hence the deep 
hunger of the world in sin ; because the sin is its attempt 
to live without God and apart from God. 

Accordingly, it is the grand endeavor of the gospel to 
communicate God to men. They have undertaken to live 
without him, and do not see that they are starving in the 
bitterness of their experiment. It is not, as with bodily 
hunger, where they have a sure instinct compelling them 
to seek their food, but they go after the husks, and would 
fain be filled with these, not even so much as conceiving 
what is their real want, or how it comes. For it is a re- 
markable fact that so few men, living in the flesh, have 
any conception that God is the necessary supply and nutri- 
ment of their spiritual nature, without which they famish 
and die. It has an extravagant sound, when they hear it 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 77 

They do not believe it. How can it be that they have any 
such high relation to the Eternal God, or he to them '( It 
is as if the tree were to say, — what can I, a mere trunk of 
wood, all dark and solid within, standing fast in my rod of 
ground, — what can I have to do with the free moving air. 
and the boundless sea of light that fills the world? And 
yet it is a nature made to feed on these, taking them into 
its body to supply, and vitalize, and color every fibre of its 
substance. Just so it is that every finite spirit is inherently 
related to the infinite, in him to live, and move, and have 
its being. It wants the knowledge of God, the society of 
God, the approbation of God, the internal manifestation 
of God, a consciousness lighted up by his presence, to re- 
ceive of his fullness, to be strong in his might, to rest in 
his love, and be centered everlastingly in his glory. Apart 
from Him, it is an incomplete creature, a poor blank frag- 
ment of existence, hungry, dry and cold. And still, alas ! 
it can not think so. Therefore Christ comes into the 
world to incarnate the divine nature, otherwise unrecog- 
nized, before it ; so to reveal God to its knowledge, enter 
him into its faith and feeling, make him its living bread, 
the food of its eternity. Therefore of his fullness we are 
called to feed, receiving of him freely grace for grace. 
"When he is received, he restores the consciousness of God, 
fills the soul with the divine light, and sets it in that con- 
nection with God which is life, — eternal life. 

Holding this view of the inherent relation between cre- 
ated souls and God as their nourishing principle, we pass — 

II. To a consideration of the necessary hunger of a state 
of sin, and the tokens by which it is indicated. A hungry 
herd of animals, waiting for the time of their feeding, dc 



78 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

not show their hunger more convincingly, by their impa- 
tient cries and eager looks and motions, than the human 
race do theirs, in the works, and ways, and tempers of 
their selfish life. 

I can only point you to a few of these demonstrations 
A nd a very impressive and remarkable one you have in 
</ais ; viz., the common endeavor to make the body receive 
rouble, so as to satisfy both itself and the soul too with its 
\ leasures. The effort is, how continually, to stimulate the 
I ody by delicacies, and condiments, and sparkling bowls, 
and licentious pleasures of all kinds, and so to make the 
body do double service. Hence too, the drunkenness, and 
high feasting, and other vices of excess. The animals 
have no such vices ; because they have no hunger save 
simply that of the body ; but man has a hunger also of 
the mind or soul, when separated from God by his sin, 
and therefore he must somehow try to pacify that. And 
he does it by a work of double feeding put upon the body. 
We call it sensuality. But the body asks not for it. The 
body is satisfied by simply that which allows it to grow 
and maintain its vigor. It is the unsatisfied, hungry mind 
that flies to the body for some stimulus of sensation, com- 
pelling it to devour so many more of the husks, or carobs, 
as will feed the hungry prodigal within. Thus it is that 
£o many dissipated j^outh are seen plunging into pleasures 
of excess, — midnight feastings and surfeitings, debauche- 
ries of lust and impiety; it is because they are hungry, 
because their sou], separated from God and the true bread 
of life in Him, aches for the hunger it suffers. AbcI so it 
is the world over; men are hungry everywhere, and they 
compel the body to make a swine's heaven for the comfort 
of the godlike soul. 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 79 

Again we see the hunger of sin, by the immense number 
of drudges there are in the world. It makes little differ- 
ence, general!}', whether men are poor or rich. Some ter- 
rible hunger is upon them, and it drives them madly for- 
ward, through burdens, and sacrifices, and toils, that would 
be rank oppression put upon a slave. It is not simply 
that they are industrious — industry is a virtue — but they 
are drudges, instigated by such a passion of want that they 
are wholly unable to moderate their plans by any terms 
of reason. 

You see too what indicates the uneasiness of this hunger, 
in the constant shifting of their plans and arrangements. 
Even the more constant, stable characters, such as hold 
most firmly to their pursuits, are yet seen to be uneasy in 
them ; comforting their uneasiness by one change or an- 
other ; a new kind of crop, a new partner, a new stand, a 
wheeling about of counters, or a change of shelves, or a 
different way of transportation, or another place of bank- 
ing, — nothing is ever quite right, because they are too un- 
easy in their hunger to be quiet long in any thing. 

Others show their hunger by their closeness ; the very 
look of their face is hungry, the gripe of their hand is 
hungry, the answer of their charity is the answer of hun- 
ger, the prices they pay for service are the grudged allow- 
ance of a heart that is pinched by its own stringent 
destitution. 

Observe again the quarrels of debt and credit, the false 
'weights, the fraudulent charges, the habitual lies of false 
recommendation, the arts, stratagems, oppressions, of 
trade, — how hungry do they look. 

Notice again how men contrive, in one way or another, 
to get, if possible, some food of content for the soul that 



80 THE HUjSGEE OF THE SOUL. 

has a finer and more fit quality than the swine's food with 
which they so often overtask the body ; — honor, powei, 
admiration, flattery, society, literary accomplishments. 
Works of genius are stimulated, how often, by a kind of 
superlative hunger. And the same is true even of the vir- 
tues that connect a repute of moderation ; such as temper- 
ance, frugality, plainness, stoical superiority to suffering ; a 
kind of subtle hunger for some consciousness of good is 
the secret root on which they grow. 

There is no end to the diverse arts men practice, to get 
some food for their soul, and to whatever course they turn 
themselves, you will see, as clearly as possible, that they 
are hungry. Nay, they say it themselves. What sad be- 
wailings do you hear from them, calling the world ashes, 
wondering at the poverty of existence, fretting at the 
courses of Providence and blaming their harshness, raging 
profanely against God's appointments, and venting their 
impatience with life, in curses on its emptiness. All this, 
you understand, is the hunger they are in. Feeding on 
carobs only, as they do, what shall we expect but to see 
them feed impatiently ? 

This also, you will notice as a striking evidence that, 
however well they succeed in the providing of earthly 
things, they are never satisfied. They say they are not, 
have it for a proverb that no man is, or can be. How 
can they be satisfied with lands, or money, or honor, or 
a ay finite good, when their hunger is infinite, reaching 
after God and the fullness of his infinite life, — God, who ia 
the object of their intelligence, their love, their hope, 
thr.ir worship ; the complement of their weakness, the crown 
of their glory, the sublimity of their rest forever. Such 
kind of huuge? manifestly could not be satisfied with any 



THE HUXGEK OF THE SOUL. 81 

Saite good, and therefore it never is. Look also at some 
of the more internal and experimental evidences supplier] 
bv consciousness. 

Consider, for example, the vice of envy, and the genera] 
propenseness of men to be in it. There are very few per- 
sons, however generous in their dispositions, who are not 
sometimes bitten by this very subtle and bitter sin. And 
the root of this misery is hunger of soul. Envy is only a 
malignant, selfish hunger, casting its evil eye on the eleva^ 
tion or supposed happiness of others. The bitterness of i1 
is not simply that it really wants what others have, but 
that the soul, gnawed by a deep spiritual hunger which it 
thinks not of, is so profoundly embittered that every kind 
of good it looks upon rasps it with a feeling of torment, 
and rouses a degree of impatience and ill nature, out of all 
terms of reason. It is the feeling of a prodigal, or spend- 
thrift who, after he has spent all, vents his ill nature on 
every body but himself, and hates the good possessed by 
others, because it is not his own. 0, how many human 
30uls are gnawed through and through, all their lives long, 
by this devilish hunger, envy. 

Eemorse differs from envy only in the fact that the soul 
here turns upon itself, just as they say it is the principal 
distress of extreme bodily hunger, that the organs of di- 
gestion begin themselves to be gnawed and digested, in 
place of the food on which the digestive power is accus 
tomed to spend its energy. Eemorse, in the same way., 
is a moral hunger of the soul. It is the bitter wail of 
a famished immortality. It is your conscience lashing 
your perverse will; your defrauded, hungry love weeping 
its dry, pitchy tears on the desert your evil life has made 
for it. It is your whole spiritual nature famished by sin, 



52 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 

muttering wrathfully, and growling like a caged lion at 
the bars which shut him up to himself. And as bodily 
hunger sometimes causes the starving man to see devils in 
his ravings, so this hunger of remorse fills the soul with 
angry demons and ministers of vengeance, waiting to exe- 
cute judgment. Sleep vanishes not seldom, or corned only 
in dreams that scare the sleeper. The day lags heavily. 
The look is on the ground. The walk is apart and silent, 
and the man carries a load under which he stoops, a load 
of selfish regret and worldly sorrow, that worketh death. 

Or, if we speak of care, the corroding, weary, ever mul- 
tiplying care, of which you are every day complaining, 
what again is this but your hunger. We like to speak, 
however, not of care, but, in the plural, of cares ; for these, 
we imagine, are outside of us, in things, not in ourselves. 
But these cares are all in ourselves, and of ourselves, and 
not in things at all, — things are not cares ; cares are only 
cravings of that immortal hunger which the swine's food 
of earthly things can not satisfy. You say in them all. 
what shall I do, for I perish with hunger ? You look up 
from the bitter husks or carobs, and say, I must have more 
and better ; and these more and better things are your 
cares. The very word care meant, originally, want; and 
these cares are nothing but the wants of a hungry soul 
misnamed. 

Sometimes, again, your feeling takes the turn of disgust. 
You are disgusted with yourself and life, and all the em- 
ployments and objects of your pursuit, disgusted even with 
your pleasures. How insipid, and dry, and foolish they 
appear. An air of distaste settles on all objects. They 
are all husks, acorns, food for swine and not for men. Just 
so it is in the starvation of the body. It creates a fevei 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 83 

and, in that fever, appetite dies. And this, accordingly, 
is the rankest proof of hunger in the soul, that it has run 
itself down to the starvation point of universal disgust. 
Life is cheap. It seems a very dull and mean thing to 
live, — as to live a prodigal and swine-herd's life it certainly 
is. Sometimes, too, your disgust turns upon your own 
character and feeling; your ambition, your pride, your 
very thoughts, and you ache for the mortification, that 
comes upon you. My ambition — how low it creeps. My 
pride — what have I, or am I to be proud of. My very 
thoughts are all trailing in the dust, and the dust is dry — 
God, is it this to be a man ! 

I might speak also of your perpetual irritations, your 
fits of anger, your animosities, your jealousies, your gloomy 
hypochondriac fears. These ail, at bottom, are the disturb- 
ances of hunger in the soul. How certainly is the child 
irritable when it is hungry. Even the placidity of infancy 
vanishes, when the body is ravening for food. So it is with 
man. He is irritable, flies to fits of passion, loses self-gov- 
ernment, simply because the placid state of satisfaction is 
wanting in his higher nature. He is out of rest, because 
of his immortal hunger. Three-quarters of the ill nature 
of the world is caused by the fact, that the soul, without 
God, is empty, and so out of rest. We charge it, more 
often than justice requires, to some fault of temperament; 
but there is no temperament that would not be quieted 
and evened by the fullness of God. 

Now the Spirit of God will sometimes show you, in an 
unwonted manner, the secret of these troubles ; for he is 
the interpreter of the soul's hunger. He comes to it whis- 
pering inwardly the awful secret of its pains, — 'without 
God and without hope in the world." He reminds the 



Si THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

prodigal of his bad history. He bids the swine-herd look 
up from his sensual objects, and works, and remember 
his home and his Father; tells him of a great supper pre- 
pared, and that all things are now ready, and bids him 
come. Conscious of the deep poverty he is in, conscious 
of that immortal being whose deep wants have been so 
long denied, wants that can be satisfied only by the essen- 
tial, eternal participation of the fullness of God, he hears 
a gentle voice of love saying, — I am the bread of life, I 
am the living bread that came down from heaven. If any 
man eat of this bread he shall live. Are there none of 
you to whom this voice is calling now ? 

I will not pursue these illustrations further. "Would 
that all my hearers could but open their minds to the les- 
son they teach. I know almost no subject, or truth, that 
will explain so many things in the uneasy demonstrations 
of mankind; or that, to any thoughtful person, living 
without God, will resolve so many mysteries concerning 
himself. Granting simply the fact that God is the want of 
the soul, or created intelligence, what can it be, separated 
from God, but an element of uneasiness and bitter disturb- 
ance ? If the soul, as a vital and organic nature, requires 
this divine food, or nutriment, to sustain it, and in this 
highest, vastest want gets no supply ; what else can you 
need to account for the unrest and the otherwise inexplica- 
ble frustration of your experience ? And yet how many 
of you, goaded by this torment all your lives, do not un- 
derstand it? You go after this or that objective, circum- 
stantial good, thrust on, as in some kind of madness, b}' 
the terrible impulsion of your hungry immortality ; con- 
fessing, all the time, that you fail, even when, in form, you 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 85 

succeed, and showing by your demonstrations that youi 
objects, whether gained or lost, have no relation to youi 
want ; but your understandings are holden from any true 
discovery of your sin. It is as if you were under some 
dispossession, even as the Saviour intimates in his parable. 
He looks upon the prodigal described, as one that has lost 
his reckoning, or his reason ; and when he discovers the 
secret of his misery, speaks of him as just then having 
come to himself. Could you come thus to yourselves, how 
quickly would you cease from your husks and return to 
your Father ! How absurd the folly, then, of any attempt 
to satisfy, or quiet your hunger, by any inferior, merely 
external good ! 

O, ye prodigals, young and old, prodigals of all namea 
and degrees ; ye that have tasted the good word of God, 
and the powers of the world to come, and have fallen away ; 
ye that have always lived in the minding of earthly things , 
how clear is it here that no swine's food, no husks of money, 
pleasure, show, ambition, can feed you ; that you have a 
divine part which none, or all of these dry carobs of sin can 
feed, which nothing can supply and satisfy but God 
himself? 

And what should be a discovery more welcome than 
this. In what are you more ennobled, than in the fact 
that you are related thus, inherently, to God ; having a 
nature so high, wants so deep and vast, that only he can 
feed them, and not even he by any bestowment which does 
not include the bestowment of himself. Would you wil- 
lingly exterminate this want of your being, and so be rid 
eternally of this hunger? That would be to cease from 
being a man and to become a worm; and even that worm ; 
remembering what it was, would be a worm gnawing itself 



86 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 

with eternal regrets. No, this torment that you feel is 
the torment of your greatness. It compliments you more, 
jven by its cravings and its shameful humiliations, than 
all most subtle flatteries and highest applauses. Nay, there 
is nothing in which God himself exalts you more than by 
his own expostulation when he says — "wherefore do you 
spend your money for that which is not bread, and your 
labor for that which satisfieth not ; hearken diligently unto 
me and eat ye that which is good. Incline your ear and 
come unto me, hear and your soul shall live." Why should 
we humble ourselves to so many things that are ashes and 
call them bread ; doubling our bodily pleasures in vices 
that take hold on hell ; chasing after gains with cancerous 
appetite ; torturing our invention to find some opiate of 
society, applause, or show, that will quiet and content our 
unrest. All in vain. 0, ye starving minds, hearken, for 
one hour, to this, and turn yourselves to it as your misery 
points you, — God, God, God alone, is the true food. Ask 
it thus of God to give you the food that is convenient for 
you, and he gives you Himself. And that is bread, bread 
of life, bread of eternity. Take it for your true supply, 
and you hunger no more. 



V. 

TH" REASON OF FAITH. 

~:zr vi r ' — £ . 77;/.:' :; c> 

is:i_; _ z iis:: n::y, that by which 

it is separated from all philosophies and schemes of mere 
ethics, that it mal: its appeal : : ith and upon that, 
:\::::1 :.::_-::;-■:.■.'- ;■::: :;::::::. res:s :he ' :::z-. ;: salvation. Il 

he word of faith, the lisdples are :_ 

as ":: rliivrrs. an:l Ci_:is: is p\;clis"_r;l as :he Savic.:r :: :L:i-i 
:'_::.: ":; rLi:-ve. 

But precisely :~_is. which is :~_r :: st : : - Lb the 

vandal and offense of men. Weore the -i n g 

but a word of £uth; a word of rhe i . :r of reason, or of 
absolute philosophy, or of ethics, or of grammar and lexi- 
cography, they could more : : ; . : 
it instead a word of : it A 
there were some meri ould be some digni: ith! 
Wh but an ax" condition, in. 
our pect, or tram j proper intelligence 
what is there to value or pi d the mer^ 
lief of any thing ? If we hold any truth by our : 
or by some act of p wing of e 
cient evidence, what need of hold g it th ? If 
undertake to hold it without such evidence, what is our 
belief in it but a surrender of our proper intelliger. 

This kind of L:_ - 
of ourtim wn defec* 



88 THE REASON OF FAITH. 

insight, and nothing is wanting, in any case, to its com- 
plete refutation, but simply a due understands g of what 
faith is, and what the office it fills. In this view, I pro- 
pose a discourse on the reason of faith; or to shcv? how it is 
thai we* as intelligent beings, are called to believe; and hoio, 
as sinners , we can, in the nature cf things, be saved only as 
we believe. 

I select the particular passage, just cited, for my text, 
simply because it sets us at the point where seeing and 
believing are brought together ; expecting to get some ad- 
vantage, as regards the illustration of my subject, from the 
mutual reference of one to the other, as held in such prox- 
imity. In this verse, (the 36th.) they are brought together 
as not being united, — ye have seen me and believe not. 
Shortly after, (in the 40th verse,) they are brought together 
as being, or to be united, — every one that seeth the Son 
and believeth on him. 

Now the first thing we observe, for it stands on the face 
of the language, is that faith is not sight, but something 
different ; so different that we may see and not believe, 
The next thing is that sight does not, in the scripture view, 
exclude faith, or supersede the necessity of it, as the com- 
mon cavil supposes; for, after sight, faith is expected. 
And still, a third point is. that sight is supposed even to 
furnish a ground for faith, making it obligatory and, where 
it is not yielded, increasing the guilt of the subject; which 
appears, both in the complaint of one verse and the re- 
quirement of the other. 

Thus much in regard to the particular case of the per- 
sons addressed ; for they were such as had themselves seen 
Christ, witnessed his miracles, "heard his teachings, and 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 89 

watched the progress of his ministry. In that respect, out 
case is different. "We get, by historic evidences, what they 
got by their senses. The attestations we have, are even 
more reliable evidences, I think, than those of sight ; but 
they bring us to exactly the same point, viz., a settled im- 
pression of fact. That such a being lived they saw with 
their eyes, and we are satisfied that he lived by other evi- 
dences addressing our judging faculty, as sight addressed 
theirs. We take their case, accordingly, as the case pro- 
posed, and shape our argument to it. 

Suppose then that you had lived as a contemporary in 
the days of Christ; that you had been privy to the dia- 
logue between the angel and Mary, and also, to all the 
intercourse of Mary and Elizabeth ; that you had heard 
the song of the angels at the nativity, and seen their shin- 
ing forms in the sky ; that you were entirely familiar with 
the youth of Jesus, were present at his baptism, saw him 
begin his ministry, heard all his discourses, witnessed all 
his miracles, stood by his cross in the hour of his passion : 
that you saw him, heard him, ate with him, touched him 
after his resurrection, and finally beheld his ascension from 
Olivet. You have had, in other words, a complete sense- 
view of him, from his first breath onward. What now 
does all this si^nifv to you ? 

Possibly much, possibly nothing. If received without 
any kind of faith, absolutely nothing ; if with two kinds of 
faith which are universally practiced, it signifies the great- 
est fact of history ; if with a third, equally rational and dis- 
tinctively Christian, it signifies a new life in the soul, and 
eternal salvation. 

Let us, in the first place, look at these two kinds of 



90 THE REASON OF FAITH. 

faith which arc universally practiced; for, if faith, is, in the 
nature of things, absurd or unintelligent, we shall be as 
likely to discover the fact here as anywhere. And we 
may discover, possibly, that the very persons who discard 
faith, as an offense to intelligence, are not even able to do 
(lie commonest acts of intelligence without it. 

We begin, then, with the case of sight, or perception 
by sight. It has been, as some of you know, a great, or 
even principal question with our philosophers, for the last 
hundred years, and these are commonly the people most 
ready to complain of faith, how it is that we perceive 
objects? The question was raised by Berkeley's denial 
that we see them at all, which, though it convinced no- 
body, puzzled every body. He said, for example, that the 
persons who saw Christ did not really see him, they had 
only certain pictures cast in the back of the eye ; which 
pictures, he maintained, were mere subjective impressions, 
nothing more ; that, by the supposition, spectators are never 
at the objects, but only at the images, which are all, intel- 
lectually speaking, they know any thing about. If they 
take it as a "fact, that they see real objects, they do it by a 
naked act of assumption, and, for aught that appears, 
impose upon themselves. The question, accordingly, has 
been, not whether real objects are perceived, for that is not 
often questioned now, but how we can imagine them to 
be ; how, in other words, it is that we bridge the gulf be- 
tween sensations and their objects ; how it is that, having 
a tree -picture or a star-picture in the back of the eye, we 
make it to be a tree, really existing on some distant hill, 
or a real star, filling its measurable space many hundred 
millions of miles distant? Some deny the possibility of 
uny solution; reducing even sight itself and all that we call 



THE REASON OF FA1TK. 91 

evidence in it to a mystery forever transcending intelli- 
gence. The best solutions agree virtually in this : — they 
conceive the soul to be such a creature that, when it has 
these forms in the eye, it takes them, as it were, instinct- 
ively, to be more than forms, viz., objects perceived; 
which is the same as to say that we complete sensation itself, 
or issue it in perception, by assigning reality ourselves to the 
distant object. And what is this, but to say that we do it by 
a kind of sense-faith contributed from ourselves? In our 
very seeing we see by faith, and, without the faith, we should 
only take in impressions to remain as last things in the 
brain. Hence, perhaps, the word perception, a through-tak- 
ing, because we have taken hold of objects through dis- 
tances, and so have bridged the gulf between us and real- 
ity. Is then sight itself unintelligent, because it includes 
an act of faith? Or, if we believe in realities, and have 
them by believing, would it be wisQr and more rational to 
let alone realities and live in figures and phantasms, painted 
on the retina of our eyes ? 

But there is another kind of faith, less subtle than thi^ 
which also is universally practiced, and admitted univers- 
ally to be intelligent. It is that kind of faith which, af- 
ter sensation is passed, or perception is completed, assigns 
truth to the things seen, and takes them to be sound his- 
toric verities. Thus, after Christ had been seen in all the 
facts of his life, it became a distinct question what to make 
of the facts ; whether possibly there could have been some 
conspiracy in the miracles; some collusion, or acting in 
the parts of Mary and her son ; some self-imposition, oi 
hallucination that will account for his opinions of himself 
and the remarkable pretensions he put forth ; whether 



92 THE KEASOST OF FAITH, 

possibly, there was any mistake in the senses, or any slight 
of hand by which they were imposed upon ? Before, the 
difficulty was natural, and related to the laws of sensation. 
Here it is moral, and respects the verity, or integrity of 
the agents. For it is a remarkable fact that the mere seeing 
of any wonder never concludes the mind of the spectator. 
How many, for example, are testifying, in our time, that they 
have seen, with their own eyes, the most fantastic and ex- 
travagant wonders wrought by the modern necromancy ; 
and yet they very commonly conclude by saying, that they 
know not what to make of them; evidently doubtiag 
whether, after all, the slight of hand tricks of jugglery 
ventriloquism, and magic, and the sometimes wondrous 
cunning of a lying character, will not account for all they 
saw. These doubts are not the ingenious doubts of phi- 
losophy, but the practical misgivings, questions and with- 
holdings of good sense. And here, again, we perceive, as 
before, that the mere seeing of Christ concludes nothing 
in the spectator, as regards his verity. He does not stand 
before the mind as a necessary truth of arithmetic or ge- 
ometry ; there the seeing ends debate, the mind is ipso facto 
concluded and there is no room for faith, either to be given 
or withholden. As the philosopher doubted whether the 
objects seen had any real existence out of him, so the 
practical spectator doubts, after all Christ's wonders, 
whether every thing was genuine, and the Christ who lived 
just such a being as he seemed to be. Probably the evi- 
dence, to one who saw, was as perfect as it could be; but 
if we could imagine it to be increased in quantity and 
power a thousand fold, remaining the same in kind, the 
mere seeing would conclude nothing. All you could say 
m such a case, would be that a given impression has been 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 93 

made . but that impression is practically naught, till an 
act of intellectual assent, or credence, is added on your 
part, -which act of assent is also another kind- of faith. H 
God were to burn himself into souls by lenses bigger than 
worlds, all you could say would be that so much imj 
sion is made, which impression is no historic verity to the 
mind, till the mind assents, on its part, and concludes t 
upon the impression. Then the impression becomes, to it, 
a real and historic fact, a sentence of credit passed. 

"We now come to the Christian, or third kind of faith, 
with some advantages already gained. Indeed, the argu- 
ment against faith, as an offense to reason, or as being insig- 
nificant where there is evidence, and absurd where there is 
not, is already quite ended. "We discover, in fact, two de- 
grees or kinds of faith, going before and typifying and com- 
mending to our respect the higher faith that is to come after, 
faith of salvation. VTe discover, also, that we can not 
-ido the commonest acts of intelligence without some 
kind of faith. First, we complete an act of perception only 
by a kind of sense-faith, moving from ourselves, and not 
from the objects perceived. Next, we pass on the historic 
verity, the moral genuineness of what we see, and our act of 
lit, so pa is also a kind of faith moving from us, and 

>mething over and above all the impressions we have 
received. A third faith remains that is just as intelligent 
and, in fact, is only more intelligent than the others, be- 
cause it carries their results forward into the true uses. 

This, distinctively, is the scripture faith, the faith of sal- 
vation, the believing unto life eternal. It begins just 
where the other and last named faith ended. That decided 
the greatest fact of history, viz., that Christ actually was. 



94 THE REASON OF FAITH, 

according to all his demonstrations. It passed on the genu- 
ine truth of those demonstrations, and set them as accred- 
ited to the account of history. Let every thing stop at that 
point, and we only have a Christ, just as we have a Ghia- 
timozin, or a Sardanapalus. The christian facts are stored 
in history, and are scarcely more significant to us, than if 
they were stored in the moon. What is wanted, just here, 
in the case of Christ, and what also is justified and even 
required by the facts of his life, is a faith that goes beyond 
the mere evidence of propositions, or propositional verities 
about Christ, viz., the faith of a transaction ; and this faith 
is Christian, faith. It is the act of trust by which one being, 
a sinner, commits himself to another being, a Saviour. It is 
not mind dealing with notions, or notional truths. It is 
what can not be a proposition at all. But it is being trust- 
ing itself to being, and so becoming other and different, 
by a relation wholty transactional. 

If a man comes to a banker with a letter of credit from 
some other banker, that letter may be read and seen to be 
a real letter. The signature also may be approved, and 
the credit of the drawing party honored by the other, as 
being wholly reliable. So far what is done is merely opin- 
ionative or notional, and there is no transactional faith. 
And yet there is a good preparation for this ; just that ifl 
done which makes it intelligent. When the receiving party, 
therefore, accepts the letter and intrusts himself actually 
to the drawing party in so much money, there is the real 
act of faith, an act which answers to the operative, or 
transactional faith of a disciple. 

Another and perhaps better illustration may be taken 
from the patient or sick person, as related to his physician. 
He sends for a physician, just because he has been led to 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 95 

have a certain favorable opinion of his faithfulness and 
capacity. But the suffering him to feel his pulse, investi- 
gate his symptoms, and tell the diagnosis of his disease, 
imports nothing. It is only the committing of his being 
and life to this ether being, consenting to receive and take 
his medicines, that imports a real faith, the faith of a 
transaction. 

In the same manner Christian faith is the faith of a 
transaction. It is not the committing of one's thought, 
in assent to any proposition, but the trusting of one's be- 
ing to a being, there to be rested, kept, guided, molded, 
governed and possessed forever. 

In this faith many things are pre-supposed, many in- 
cluded ; and, after it, many will follow. 

Every thing is pre-supposed that makes the act intelli- 
gent and rational. That Christ actually lived and waa 
what he declared himself to be. That he was no other 
than the incarnate Word of the Father. That he came 
into the world to recover and redeem it. That he is able 
to do it ; able to forgive, regenerate, justify and set in - 
nal peace with God, and that all we see, in his passion, is 
a true revelation of God's feeling to the world. 

There was also a certain antecedent improbability of any 
such holy visitation, or regenerative grace, which has to 
be liquidated or cleared, before the supposed faith can be 
transacted. We live in a state under sin, where causes are 
running against us, or running destructively in us. \\ r e 
have also a certain scientific respect to causes, and expect 
them to continue. But Christ comes into the world, as one 
not under the scheme of causes. lie declares that he is not 
jf the world, but is from above. He undertakes to verify 



9tf THE REASON OF FAITH. 

his claim by his miracles, and his miracles by his transcend- 
ent character. Assuming all the attributes of a power 
supernatural, he declares that he can take us out of nature 
and deliver us of the bad causes loosened by our sm, 
Now that he really is such a being, having such a power 
supernatural, able thus to save unto the uttermost, we 
are to have accredited, before we can trust ourselves to him. 

But this will be less difficult, because we are urged by 
such a sense of bondage under sin, and have such loads of 
conscious want, brokenness and helplessness upon us. 
Besides, if we look again into our disorders, we find that 
they are themselves abnormal, disturbances only, by our 
sin, of the pure and orderly harmony of causes ; so that 
Christ, in restoring us, does not break up, but only recom- 
poses the true order of nature. Inasmuch, therefore, as 
our salvation, or deliverance from evil, implies a restora- 
tion, and not any breach of nature, the incredible thing 
appears to be already done by sin itself, and the credible, 
the restoration only, remains. 

Having now all this previous matter cleared, we come 
to the transactional faith itself. We commit ourselves to 
the Lord Jesus, by an act of total and eternal trust, which 
is our faith. The act is intelligent, because it is intelli- 
gently prepared. It is not absurd, as being something 
more than evidence. It is not superseded by evidence. 
It is like the banker's acceptance, and the patient's taking 
of medicine, a transactional faith that follows evidence. 

The matters included in this act, for of these we will now 
speak, are the surrender of our mere self-care, the ceasing 
to live from our own point of separated will, a complete 
admission of the mind of Christ, a consenting practically 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 97 

to be modulated by his motives and aims, and to live, as 
it-were, infolded in his spirit. It is committing one's char- 
acter wholly to the living character of Jesus, so that every 
willing and working and sentiment shall be pliant to his 
superior mind and spirit; just as a man, trusting himself 
to some superior man, in a total and complete confidence, 
allows that other to flow down upon him, assimilate him, 
and, as far as he may, with a superiority so slight, conform 
him to the subject of his trust. Only there is, in the faith 
of salvation, a trusting in Christ vastly more interior and 
searching, a presence internal to parts internal, a complete 
bathing of the trusting soul in Christ's own love and 
beauty. 

Those things, which were just now named as pre-sup- 
posed matters, are all opinionative and prior to this which 
is the real faith, and this faith must go beyond all mere 
historic credences of opinion ; it must include the actual 
surrender of the man to the Saviour. It must even in- 
clude the eternity or finality of that surrender ; for if it 
is made only as an experiment, and the design is only to 
try what the Saviour will do, then it is experiment, not 
faith. Any thing and every thing which is necessary to 
make the soul a total, final deposit of trust in the Lord 
Jesus, must be included in the faith, else it is not faith, and 
can not have the power of faith. It must be as if, hence- 
forth, the subject saw his every thing in Christ, his right- 
eousness, his whole character, his life-work and death- 
struggle, and the hope of his eternity. 

How great is the transaction ! and great results will follow, 
such as these : — 

He will be as one possessed by Christ, created anew in 



98 THE REASON OF FAITH 

Christ Jesus. There will be a Christ-powei resting upon 
him and operative in him- an immediate knowledge of 
Christ, as a being revealed in the consciousness. A Christly 
character will come over him, and work itself into him. 
AH his views of life will be changed. The old disturb- 
ance will be settled into loving order, and a conscious and 
sweet peace will flow down, like a divine river, through 
the soul, watering all its dryness. It will be in liberty, 
free to good ; wanting only opportunities to do God's will. 
Fear will be cast out, confidence established, hope anchored, 
and all the great eternity to come taken possession of, 
Christ will constrain every motion, in such a way thai 
no constraint shall be felt, and the new man will be so 
exhilarated in obedience, and raised so high in the sense 
of God upon him, that sacrifice itself will be joy, and the 
fires of martyrdom a chariot to the victor soul. 

But the most remarkable, because to some the most 
unaccountable and extravagant result of faith, is the crea- 
tion of new evidence. The exercise of faith is itself a 
proving of the matter, or the being trusted. It requires, 
in order to make it intelligent, some evidence going before: 
and then more evidence will follow, of still another kind. 
As in trying a physician, or trusting one's life to him, new 
evidence is obtained from the successful management of 
the disease, so the soul that trusts itself to Christ knows 
him with a new kind of knowledge, that is more immedi- 
ate and clear, knows him as a friend revealed within, knows 
him as the real power of God, even God in sacrifice. He 
that believeth hath the witness in himself, — the proof of 
Jesus, in him, is made out and verified by trust. Every 
thing in that text of scripture, that stumbles so many of 
our wise reasoners, is verified to the letter: — Now faith \s 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 99 

the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
not seen. It is not said that faith goes before all evidence, 
but that, coming after some evidence, it discovers more 
and greater. It makes substance of what before stood in 
hope ; it proves things unseen and knows them by the im- 
mediate evidence of their power in the soul. Hence it is 
that faith is described, everywhere, as a state so intensely 
luminous. Trust in God will even prove him to be, more 
inevitably and gloriously than all scientific arguments. 
The taking immortality by trust and acting one's mighty 
nature into it proves it, as it were, by the contact of it. 
The faith itself evidences the unseen life, when ail previ- 
ous evidences wore a questionable look. And so the whole 
Christian life becomes an element of light, because the 
trust itself is an experience of Christ and of God. 

And so truly intelligent is the process, that it answers 
exactly, in a higher plane, to the process of perception 
itself, already referred to. For when objects, that cast 
their picture in the eye, are accepted and trusted to as 
being more than pictures, solid realities, then, by that faith, 
is begun a kind of experiment. Taking, now, all these 
objects to be realities, we go into all the practical uses of 
life, handling them as if realities, and so, finding how they 
support all our uses and show themselves to be what we 
took them for, we say that we know them to be real, hav- 
ing found them by our trust. Exactly so, only in a much 
higher and nobler sense, it is that faith is the substance 
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not sceru 
Is there any thing in this which scandalizes intelligence? 
I think not. 

If now you have follower! me, in these illustration^ 



100 THE REASON OF FAITH. 

which* I know are somewhat abstruse, yon will not com- 
plain of their abstruseness, but will be glad, by any means, 
to escape from those difficulties which have been gathered 
round the subject of faith, by the unilluminated and super- 
ficial speculations of our times. Handling the subject 
more superficially, I might have seemed to some to do 
more, but should, in fact, have done nothing. Let us 
gather up now, in closing, some of the lessons it yields. 
And— 

1. The mistake is here corrected of those, who are con- 
tinually assuming that the gospel is a theorem, a some- 
thing to be thought out, and not a new premise of fact 
communicated by God, — by men to be received in all 
the three-fold gradations of faith. To mill out a scheme 
of free will and responsibility, to settle metaphysically 
questions of ability and inability, to show the scheme of 
regeneration as related to a theory of sin and not to the 
conscious fact, may all be very ingenious and we may call 
it gospel ; but it is scarcely more than a form of rational- 
ism. Feeding on such kind of notional and abstract wis- 
dom, and not on Christ, the bread that came down from 
heaven, we grow, at once, more ingenious in the head, and 

more shallow in the heart, and, in just the compound ratio 

• 

of both, more naturalistic and sceptical. Loosing out our 
robustness, in this manner, and the earnestness of our 
spiritual convictions, our ministry becomes, in just the 
same degree, more ambitious and mere untransforming to 
the people, and the danger is that, finally, even the sense 
of religion, as a gift of God, a divine light in the soul, 
revealed from faith to faith, will quite die out and be lost. 
Our gospel will be nature, and our faith will be reason, 
and the true Christ will be nothing, — all the grand, 



THE REASON" OF FAITH. 101 

life-giving truths of the incarnate appearing and cross are 
resolved into myths and legends. 

2. We discover that the requirement of faith, as a con- 
dition of salvation, is not arbitrary, as many appear to 
suppose, but is only a declaration of the fact, before exist- 
ing, that "without faith there can be no deliverance from 
sin. The precise difficulty with us in our sin is, that we 
can not make ourselves good and happy by acting on our- 
selves. Faith, accordingly, is not required of us, because 
Christ wants to humble us a little, as a kind of satisfaction 
far letting go the penalty of our sins, but because w^e can 
not otherwise be cleared of them at all. What we want 
is God, God whom we have lost; to be united, being to 
being, sinner to Saviour; thus to be quickened, raised up, 
and made again to partake, as before sin, the divine nature. 
And, for just this reason, faith is required; for w^e come 
into the power of God only as we trust ourselves to him 
And here it is, at this precise point, that our gospel excels 
all philosophies, proving most evidently its divine origin. 
It sees the problem as it is, and shows, in the requirement 
of faith as the condition of salvation, that it comprehends 
the wmole reason of our state. It has the sagacity to see 
that, plainly, there is no such thing as a raising of man, 
without God ; also that there is no God save as we find 
him by our trust, and have him revealed within, by rest- 
ing our eternity on him. And hence it is that all those 
scripture forms of imputation spring up, as a necessary 
language of faith, under the gospel. We come, in our 
trust, unto God, and the moment w T e so embrace him, by 
committing our total being and eternity to him, we fine] 
every thing in us transformed. There is life in us from 
God; a kind of Christ-consciousness is opened in us, 

9* 



102 THE REASON OF FAITH. 

testifying, with the apostle, — Christ liveth in me. We se^ 
therefore, in him, the store of all gifts and graces. Every 
thing flows down upon us from him, and so we begin to 
speak of being washed, sanctified, justified, in him. He is 
our peace, our light, our bread ; the way, the truth, and the 
life. And, in just the same manner, he is our righteous- 
ness ; for he is, so to speak, a soul of everlasting integrity 
for us, and when we come in to be with him, he becomes 
in us what he is to himself. We are new created and 
clothed in righteousness, from his glorious investiture. 
The righteousness of God, which is, by faith of Jesus 
Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe, is upon us, 
and the very instinct of our faith, looking unto God in 
this conscious translation of his nature to us, is to call him 
The Lord our Eighteousness, the justifier of him that 
believeth in Jesus. 

Such now, my friends is faith. It gives you God, fills 
you with God in immediate experimental knowledge, puts 
you in possession of all there is in him, and allows you 
to be invested with his character itself. Is such faith a 
burden, a hard and arbitrary requirement? Why, it is 
your only hope, your only possibility. Shall this most 
grand and blessed possibility be rejected? So far it has 
been, and you have even been able, it may be, in your 
lightness, to invent ingenious reasons against any such 
plan of salvation. God forbid that you do not some time 
take the penalty of having just that salvation without 
faith to work out which you so blindly approve! 

3. We perceive, in our subject, that mere impressions 
can never amount to faith. At this point, the unbelievers 
and all such as are waiting to have convictions and spiritual 
impressions wrought in them that amount to faith, perfectly 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 103 

agree, The unbelievers and cavillers say that impressions, 
taken as evidences, are every thing, and that, over and 
above these, faith is nonsense. Yon that are waiting to be 
in faith, by merely having your convictions and feelings 
intensified, say the same thing; for you expect your im- 
pressions to coalesce in faith, and so to be faith. That, as 
we have seen already, is forever impossible. Faith is more 
than impression ; it moves from you, it is the trusting of 
your being, in a total, final act of commitment, to the 
being of Christ, your Saviour. Impressions shot into you, 
ever by thunder-bolts, would not be faith in you. Ye 
also have seen me, savs Jesus, and believe not. Xo im- 
pression can be stronger and more positive than sight, and 
yet not even this was equivalent to faith. It was a good 
ground of faith, nothing more. Whatever drawings, then, 
impressions, convictions, evidences, God in his mercy may 
give you, they will only ask your faith and wait for it. 
Will you, can you, then, believe ? On that question hangs 
every thing decisive as regards your salvation. This crisis 
of faith, — can you ever pass it, or will you always be 
waiting for a faith to begin in 3'ou which is not faith, and 
never can be ? Let the faith be yours, as it must ; your 
own coming to Christ, your own act of self-surrender, your 
coming over to him and eternal trust in him for peace, life, 
truth and bread ; knowing assuredly that he will be made 
unto you all these, and more, — wisdom, righteousness, 
sanctiiieation and redemption. 

Finally, it is very plain that what is now most wanted, 
in the Christian worl 1, is more faith. We too little respect 
faith, we dabble too much in reason; fabricating gospels, 
where we ought to be receiving Christ; limiting all faith, 
if we chance to allow of faith, by the measures of previous 



104 THE REASON OF FAITH. 

evidence, and cutting the wings of faith when, laying 
hold of God, and bathing in the secret mind of God, it 
conquers more and higher evidence. Here is the secret of 
our sects and schisms, that we are so much in the head ; 
for, when we should be one in faith, by receiving our one 
Lord, as soon as we go off into schemes and contrived sum* 
maries of notions, reasoned into gospels, what can follow 
but that we have as many gospels as we have heads and 
theories? It never can be otherwise, till we are united by 
faith. The word of reason is a word of interminable 
schism and subdivision, and the propagation of it, as in 
those animals that multiply by dividing their own bodies, 
will be a fissiparous process to the end of the world. 0, 
that the bleeding and lacerated body of Christ could once 
more be gathered unto the Head, and fastened there by a 
simple, vital trust ; that his counsel and feeling and all his 
divine graces might flow down upon it, as a sacred healing 
and a vivifying impulse of love and sacrifice ; and that so, 
fighting each other no more, we might all together fight 
the good fight of faith. 

We shall never recover the true apostolic energy and be 
indued with power from on high, as the first disciples 
were — and this exactly is the prayer in which the holiest, 
most expectant and most longing souls on earth are wait- 
ing now before God — till we recover the lost faith. As re- 
gards a higher sanctification, which is, I trust, the cherished 
hope of us all, nothing is plainer than the impossibility of 
it, except as we can yield to faith a higher honor and abide 
in it with a holier confidence. Every man is sanctified 
according to his faith ; for. it is by this trusting of himself 
to Christ that he becomes invested, exalted, irradiated, and 
finally glorified in Christ. Be it unto you according to 



THE REASON OF FAITH. 105 

your faith, is the true principle, and by that the whole life- 
state of the church on earth always has been, always will 
be graduated. Increase our faith, then, Lord ! be this our 
prayer. 

That prayer, I believe, is yet to be heard. After we 
have gone through all the rounds of science, speculation 
dialectic cavil, and wise unbelief, we shall do what they 
did not even in the apostolic times, we shall begin to 
settle conceptions of faith that will allow us, and all the 
ages to come, to stand fast in it and do it honor. And then 
God will pour himself into the church again, I know not 
in what gifts. Faith will then be no horseman out upon 
the plain, but will have a citadel manned and defended, 
whence no power of man can ever dislodge it again. Faith 
will be as much stronger now than science, as it is higher 
and more diffusive. And now the reign of God is estab- 
lished. Christ is now the creed, and the whole church of 
God is in it. fulfilling the work of faith with power. 



VI. 



REGENERATION. 

John iii 3. — "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily , 
verily I say unto thee, except a man be bom again, he can not 
see the kingdom of God" 

This very peculiar expression, born again, is a phrase 
that was generated historically in the political state, then 
taken up by Christ, and appropriated figuratively to the 
spiritual use in which we find it. Thus foreigners, or 
Gentiles, were regarded by the Jewish people as unclean. 
Therefore, if any Gentile man wanted to become a Jewish 
citizen, he was baptized with water, in connection with 
other appropriate ceremonies, and so, being cleansed, was 
admitted to be a true son of Abraham. It was as if he 
had been born, a second time, of the stock of Abraham ; 
and becoming, in this manner, a native Jew, as related to 
the Jewish state, he was said, in form of law, to be born 
again. Our term naturalization signifies essentially the 
same thing; viz., that the subject is made to be a natural 
born American, or, in the eye of the law, a native citizen. 
Finding this Jewish ceremony on foot, and familiarly 
known, Christ takes advantage of it, '(and the more natur- 
ally that a person so regenerated was, by the supposition, 
entered, religiously, into the covenant of Abraham,) as 
affording a good analogy, and a good form of expression, 
to represent the naturalization of a soul in the kingdom 
of heaven. Regarding us, in our common state under sin, 



EEGEKEKATION. 107 

as aliens, or foreigners, and not citizens in the kingdom, 
unclean in a deeper than ceremonial and political sense, 
he says, in a manner most emphatic, — Verily, verily I say 
unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God. And ao-ain, — Marvel not that I said ante 
von, ve must be born again. In this lano-uao-e, so emploved, 
he gives us to understand that no man can ever be accepted 
before God, or entered into the kingdom of the glorified, 
who is not cleansed by a spiritual transformation, in that 
manner born of God, and so made native in the kingdom. 
He does not leave us to suppose that he is speaking merely 
of a ceremonial cleansing. lie only takes the ivater by 
the way, as a symbol, and adds the Spirit as the real cleans- 
ing power ; — Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, 
he can not enter into the kingdom of God. That which 
is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit. 

I propose, now, a deliberate examination of this great 
subject, hoping to present such a view of it as will com- 
mand the respect of any thoughtful person, whatever may 
have been his previous difficulties and objections. My 
object will be to unfold the scripture doctrine, in a way to 
make it clear, not doubting that, when it is intelligibly 
shown, it will also prove itself to be soundly intelligent, 
and will so command our assent, as a proper truth of sal- 
vation. I believe, also, that many minds are confused, to 
Buch a degree, m their notions of this subject, as must 
fatally hinder them, in their efforts to enter the gate which 
it opens. 

I call your attention specially to three points : — 

I. That Christ requires of all mankind, without distinction, 



108 REGENEKATION. 

some great and important change, as the necessary con- 
dition of their salvation. 

II. The nature and definition of this change. 

III. The manner in which it is, and is to be, effected. 



I. That Christ requires of all some great and important 
change. 

He does not, of course, require it of such as are already 
subjects of the change, and many are so even from their 
earliest years ; having grown up into Christ by the pre- 
venting or anticipating grace of their nurture in the Lord; 
so that they can recollect no time, when Christ wa& not 
their love, and the currents of their inclination did not run 
toward his word and his cause. The case, however, of 
such is no real exception ; and, besides this, there is even 
no semblance of exception. Intelligence, in fact, is not more 
necessary to our proper humanity, than the second birth 
of this humanity, as Christ speaks, to its salvation. Many 
can not believe, or admit any such doctrine. It savors of 
hardness, they imagine, or undue severity, and does not 
correspond with what they think they see, in the examples 
of natural character among men. There is too much ami- 
ability and integrity, too much of exactness and even of 
scrupulousness in duty, to allow any such sweeping require- 
ment, or the supposition of any such universal necessity. 
How can it be said or imagined that so many moral, 
honorable, lovely, beneficent and habitually reverent per- 
sons need to be radically and fundamentally changed in 
character, before they can be saved? 

That, according to Christ, depends on the question 
whether. " the one thing 7 ' is really lacking in them or not. 
If it be, not even the fact that he can look upon them 



KEGENEKATION. 109 

with love will, at all, modify his requirement. This is the 
word of Christ, this his new testament still, — regeneration 
universal regeneration, thus salvation. 

We can see too, for ourselves, that Christianity is based 
on the fact of this necessity. It is not any doctrine of 
development, or self-culture ; no scheme of ethical practice, 
or social re-organization ; but it is a salvation ; a power 
moving on fallen humanity from above its level, to re- 
generate and so to save. The whole fabric is absurd there- 
fore, unless there was something to be done in man and 
for him that required a supernatural intervention. TTe 
can see too, at a glance, that the style of the transaction is 
supernatural, from the incarnate appearing onward. "Were 
it otherwise, were Christianity a merely natural and earthly 
product, then it were only a fungus growing out of the 
world, and, with all its high pretensions, could have noth- 
ing more to do for the world, than any other fungus for the 
heap on which it grows. The very name, Jesus, is a false 
pretense, unless he has something to do for the race, 
which the race can not do for itself; something re- 
generative and new-creative; something fitly called a 
salvation. V 

But how can we imagine, some of you will ask, that 
God is going to stand upon any such definite and rigid 
terms with us ? Is he not a more liberal being and capable 
of doing better things ? Since he is very good and very 
great, and we are very weak and very much under the 
law of circumstances, is it not more rational to suppose 
that he will find some way to save us, and that, if we do 
not come into any such particular terms of life, it will be 
about as well ? May we not safely risk the consequences ? 
It ought to be a sufficient answer to all such suggestions, 

10 



110 REGE^EEATION 

that Christ evidently understood what is necessary for us* 
better than we do, and that we discover no disposition to 
uncharitableness or harshness in him. He comes directly 
out from God and knows the mind of God. He takes om 
case upon him, and is so pressed by the necessities of our 
state, that he is even willing to die for us. 

It ought also to be observed that all such kinds of argu- 
ment are a plea for looseness, which is not the manner of 
God. Contrary to this, we discover, in ail we know of 
him, that he is the exactest of beings ; doing nothing with- 
out fixed principles, and allowing nothing out of its true 
place and order. He weighs every world of the sky, even 
to its last atom, and rolls it into an orbit exactly suited to 
its uses and quantities. Nothing is smuggled out of place, 
or into place, because it is well enough anywhere. If a 
retreating army wants to cross a frozen river, the ice will 
not put off dissolving, but will run into the liquid state, at 
a certain exact point of temperature. If a man wants to 
live, there is yet some diseased speck of matter, it may be, 
in his brain, or heart, which no microscope even could de- 
tect, and by that speck, or because of it, he will die at a 
certain exact time ; which time will not be delayed, for a 
day, simply because it is only a speck. Is then character 
a matter that God will treat more loosely ? will he decide 
the great questions of order and place, dependent on it, 
by no exact terms or conditions? If he undertakes 
to save, will he save as by accommodation, or by some 
fixed law ? If he undertakes to construct a beatific state, 
will he gather in a jumble of good and bad, and call it 
Leaven? How certainly will any expectation of heaven, 
based on the looseness of God, and the confidence that he 
will stand for no very exact terms, issue in dreadful disap- 



KEGEjN-ERATION. Ill 

poLument. And the more certainly, in this case, that the 
exactness supposed refers, not to any mere atoms of quantity, 
but to eternal distinctions of kind. His law of gravity 
will as soon put the sea on the backs of the mountains, as 
his terms of salvation will gather into life them that are 
not quickened in his Son. 

Do we not also see as clearly, as possible, for ourselves, 
what signifies much ; that some men, a very large class of 
men, are certainly not in a condition to enter the kingdom 
of God, or any happy and good state. They have no 
purity or sympathy with it. They are slaves of passion. 
They are cruel, tyrannical, brutal, and even disgusting to 
decency; fearful, unbelieving, abominable. Who can 
think that these are ready to melt into a perfectly blessed 
and celestial society? But, if not these, then there must 
be a division, and where shall it fall ? If a line must be 
drawn, it must be drawn somewhere, and what is on one 
side of that line will not be on the other ; which is the 
same as to say that there must be exact terms of salvation 
if there are any. 

Again, we know, we feel in our own consciousness, 
while living in the mere life of nature, that we are not in 
a state to enjoy the felicities of a purely religious and 
spotlessly sinless world. We turn from it with inward 
pain. Our heart is not there. We want the joys of that 
state ; we feel a certain hunger, at times, after God him- 
self; and that hunger is to us an assured evidence that we 
have him not. I do not undertake to press this argument 
further than it will bear. I only say that we feel conscious 
of something uncongenial, in our state, toward God and 
heaven. We seem to ourselves not to be in the kingdom 
of God, but without, and can hardly imagine how we 



112 REGENERATION. 

sliall ever find any so great felicity in the employments of 

liolv minds. 
%/ 

It is also a very significant proof that some great change 
is needed in us that, when we give ourselves to some new 
purpose of amendment, or undertake to act up more ex- 
actly to the ideals of our mind, we are consciously legal 
in it, and do all by a kind of constraint. Something tells 
us that we are not spontaneous in what we do ; that our 
currents do not run this way, but the contrary. A sad 
kind of heaven will be made by this sort of virtue ! How 
dry it is, and if we call it service, how hard a service ! 
"What we want is liberty, to be in a kind of inspiration, to 
have our inclinations run the way of our duty, to be so 
deep in the spirit of it as to love it for its own sake. And 
this exactly is what is meant by the being born of Grod. 
It is having Grod revealed in the soul, moving in it as the 
grand impulse of life, so that duty is easy and, as it were, 
natural. Then we are in the kingdom, as being natural- 
ized in it, or native born. Our regeneration makes us free 
in good. How manifest is it that, without this freedom, 
this newly generated inclination to good, all our supposed 
service is mockery, our seeming excellence destitute of 
sound reality. 

There is then a change, a great spiritual change, required 
by Christianity as necessary to salvation, and we find 
abundant reason, in all that we know of ourselves and the 
world, to admit the necessity of some transformation quite 
us radical. In presence of a truth so momentous and 
serious, we now raise the question — 

II. What is the nature of this change, how shall it be 
conceived ? 



REGENERATION. 113 

To make the answer as clear as possible, let some things 
which only confuse the mind, and which often enter largely 
into the discussion, be excluded. 

Thus a great deal of debate is had over the supposed 

instantaneousness of the change. But that is a matter of 

<^ 

theory and not of necessary experience. If we call the 
change a change from bad in kind to good in kind, from 
a wrong principle of life to a right, the change will imply 
a berinning; of what is good and right, and a gradual be- 
ginning of any thing would seem to be speculatively im- 
possible. Still the change is, in that view, only an instan- 
taneous beginning. But, however this may be in specula- 
tion, there is often, or even commonly, no consciousness of 
any such sudden transition. The subject often can not tell 
the hour, or the day ; he only knows, it may be, look- 
ins: back over hours or days, or even months, that he ia 
a different man. 

Some persons hold impressions of the change which 
suppose, or even require it to be gradual. This is an error 
quite as likely to confuse the mind ; for then they set out, 
almost of course, to make it a change only of degrees, in 
the old plane of the natural character. The true practical 
method is to drop out all considerations and questions of 
time, and look at nothing but the simple fact of the change 
itself, whenever and however accomplished. 

Much, again, is said in this matter of previous states 
and exercises — conviction, distress, tumult ; then of light, 
peace, hope, bursting suddenly into the gouI. Let no one 
attempt to realize any such description. Something of 
the kind may be common among the inductive causes, or 
the consequences of the change, but has nothing to do 
with its radical id 

xO* 



114 REGENERATION. 

Excluding now all these points, which are practically 
immaterial and irrelevant, as regards a definite conception 
of the change, let us carefully observe, first of all, how the 
scriptures speak of it, or what figure it makes in their 
representations; and more especially the fact that they 
never speak of it as being a change of degrees, an amend- 
ment of the life, an improvement or growing better in the 
plane of the old character. Contrary to this, they use bold, 
sweeping contrasts, and deal, as it were, in totalities. It 
is the being born again, or born over ; as if it were a spirit- 
ual reproduction of the man. They describe him as 
one new created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Old 
things they declare to be passed away, behold all things 
are become new. It is passing from death to its opposite 
life. It is dying with Christ, to walk with him in newness 
of life. That which is born of the flesh is declared to be 
flesh ; and, in the same sense, that which is born of the 
Spirit to be spirit; as if a second nature, free to good, 
were inbreathed by the Divine Spirit, partaking his own 
quality. 

It is called putting off the old man and putting on the 
new man, which after God is created in righteousness and 
true holiness ; as if there was even a substitution of one 
man for another in the change, a new divine man in the 
place of the old. 

Again, it is called being transformed, and that by a re 
newing even of the mind, or intelligent principle. 

Again, as if forever to exclude the idea of a mere grow- 
ing better by care, and duty, and self improvement, an 
apostle says— Not by works of righteousness which we 
have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the 
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost 



REGENERATION. 11 



Now you understand that a change of this kind can be 
spoken of, or described, only in figures. Therefore none 
of these expressions are to be taken as literal truths. But 
the great question under them is this — is the change spoken 
of a change merely of degree, or is it a change of kind ? 
is it simply the improving of principles already planted in 
the soul, or is it the passing into a new state under new 
principles, to be started into a life radically different from 
the former ? I have not one doubt which of the two alter- 
natives to accept as the true answer. Had it been the 
matter in hand, in redeeming the world, simply to make 
us better in degree, it would have been the easiest thing 
in the world to say it. The gospel does not say it. On 
the contrary, it labors after terms in which to set forth a 
change of kind, of principle, — a grand anakainosis, 
renovation, new creation, spiritually speaking, of the man. 

Nor is there vmj thing contrary to this, in those expres- 
sions which require a process of growth and gradual 
advancement. For it is only potentially that the new life 
is regarded as a complete or total renovation. As the 
child is potentially a man, as the seed planted is potentially 
the fall grown plant, so it is with the regenerated life in 
Christ. It is a beginning, the implanting of a new 
seed, and then we are to see, first the blade, then the ear, 
and after that the full corn in the car. All such concep- 
tions of growth fall into place under the fact that the new 
character begun is only begun, and that, while it is the 
root and spring of a complete renovation, it must needs 
unfold itself and fill itself out into completeness, by a pro- 
cess of holy living On the other hand, there cculd be no 
growth if there were not something planted, and ii is 
everywhere assumed and taught that ; until the new man 



116 REGENERATION. 

is born, or begotten, there is not so much, as a seed of true 
holiness, no principle that can be unfolded ; that, without 
faith, the soul abideth even in death, and therefore can 
not grow. 

Advancing -now from this point, let us see if we can 
accurately conceive the interior nature of the change. 

Every man is conscious of this ; that when he acts in any 
particular manner of wrong doing, or sin, or neglect of 
God, there is something in the matter besides the mere act, 
or acts. There is a something back of the action which is 
the reason why it is done. In the mere act itself, there is, 
in fact, no character at all. In striking another, for ex- 
ample, the mere thrust of the arm, by the will, is the act ; 
and, taken in that narrow mechanical sense, there is no 
wrong in it, more than there is in the motion that dispenses 
a charity. The wrong is back of the act, in some habit 
of soul, some disposition, some status of character, whence 
the action comes. ISTow this something, whatever it be, is 
the wrong of all wrong, the sin of all sin, and this must 
be changed — which change is the condition of salvation. 

Sometimes this change is conceived to be a really organ- 
ic change in the subject. The strong expressions just 
referred to, in the scripture, are taken literally, as if there 
was and must needs be, a literal re-creation of the man. 
The difficulty back of the wrong action is conceived to be 
the man himself, as a mal-constructed and constitutionally 
evil being, who can never be less evil, till something is 
taken out of him and replaced by a new insertion, which 
is, in fact, a new creation, by the fiat of omnipotence 
But this, it is plain, would be no proper regeneration of 
the man, but the generation rather of another man in his 
place. Personal identity would be overthrown. The 






REGENERATION. 117 

man would not, or should not, be consciously the same 
thai be was. Besides, i 1 to put off the 

man ours slv s and put on the new, and even to make our- 
lew heart and a new spirit, which shows. 
rly as possible, that we are to act concurrently in the 
change ourselves, whatever it be. But how can we act 

ly in a literal re-creation of our nature? 
Sometimes, again, the change is conceived to be only a 
purpose, a change of what is called the govern- 
ing purpose. Yon del : oined this morning, for example, 
tend worship in this lace. This determination, or 
purpose, being ms le, it in one vie 1 assed out of mind; 
you did not continue to say and repeat, ;i I will do it," till 

1 the place and took your seat; and yet it - 
virtually in you, governing all your thousand subordinate 
volitiops, in rising, preparing, walking, choosing your way, 
and the like, down to that moment. Just so there is, it is 
, a I ad governing purpc -jlf-devotion, back 

of the whole life, making it what it is ; and what chris- 
tian: - or requ: the change of that purp - : 
which being changed, a change is wrought in the whole 
life and character. And thi conceived, is to be born 
in. The change of the governing purpose is the re- 
generation of the man. 

The illustration, somewhat popularly taken, has truth 
in it, and it may be used in many cases with advan: a . 
Still it :.- . _overning purpose that we find, 

when we look for the seat of our disorder, but a something 
rather which we call a bad mind, state, or disposition. 
Having a certain y of freedom, this bad mind, state, 

or disposition, may be represented analogically by a 
governing purpose, though it can net be identified with 



L18 REGENERATION". 

that. It is to the character what the will is dynamically 
to the actions, a bad affinity that distempers and carnalize? 
the whole man. I know not how to describe it better than 
to call it a false love, a wrong love, a downward, selfish love, 
How this love gets dominion, or becomes established in us, 
is not now the question. Enough to know that this wrong 
love is in us, and, being in us, is the source of a wrong 
life, much as the bad governing purpose is said to be. 
Only it is a more real and fatal condition of bondage and 
a less superficial evil. When we speak of a purpose that 
needs to be changed, we have only to will it and the change 
is wrought. But when we speak of changing one's reign- 
ing love, so that his life shall be under another love, a 
right love, a heavenly, a divine love, that is quite another 
and deeper and more difficult matter. 

Every man's life, practically speaking, is shaped by his 
love. If it is a downward, earthly love, then his actions 
will be tinged by it, all his life will be as his reigning love. 
This love, you perceive, is not a mere sentiment, or casual 
emotion, but is the man's settled affinity ; it is thai 
which is, to his character, what the magnetic force is to 
the needle, the power that adjusts all his aims and works, 
and practically determines the man. It only must be 
either a downward love, or an upward love; for, being the 
last love and deepest of the man, there can not be two last 
and deepest, it mast be one or the other. And then, as 
this love changes, it works a general revolution of the 
man. 

Hence it is that so much is said of the heart in the 
gospel, and of a change of the heart; for it is what pro- 
ceeds out of the heart that defileth the man. The meaning 
is, not that Christianity proposes to give us a new organ uf 



REGENERATION. 119 

pool, or lI r of the soul and insert an- 

other, ; _ the love of the heart A 

man'; i thi 2 - n's heart . 

Thus it is ledared that God will write his laws in 
:f men, which is saying that he will brine his 1: 
into their love. I this, it is - 

that lov Gk \ and every one th : 1 reth is rn E 

: th ..: :>. th rev . that h a the right love, the 

heav established in him, h 

on whi ;n hangs. 

_ 

I have brought yon oni'. 

of th- ht . t maybe : 

tvi . And her and 

higher which i s scriptural, and which n 

in vi 3W, in r lei fcc a right d iu next 

point, the manner in which the ch; age 

- - . a will bserve.1 have Ic >ke 1 li tl ' 
subject of the change, r _ only wh t trai res in 

him man. He is no1 - . he is not si 

iged in his _ . _ 1 in his 

ing love. Still he could not mau in 

his own spirit, from another eh; 

which this is only an incident. > all, the prin 

_ is not in him him- 

it in his personal i rnal 

to himself. In his prior, unn s 

hew- - - in himself, living 

in himself and to himself. And I - not m: live 

in this manner. He was ma ie to live in God, to be con- 
scious of God, to know him 1 immediate knov I _ , 
to act 1 rd, to be i I by 
him. By this I mean nc he is to be inspired in 



120 REGENERATION, 

the same sense and manner as a prophet is, or a writer ol 
scripture, which, is the sense commonly attached to the 
word ; I only mean that he is made to be occupied, filled, 
governed, moved, exalted, by His all-containing Spirit ; so 
that all his tempers, actions, ends, enjoyments, will be from 
Gcd. A tree can as well live out of the light, or out of 
the air, as a finite soul out of God and separate from (rod. 
Ilere then is the grand overtowering summit of the change 
that the man is born of God. He is born into God, re- 
stored to the living connection with God that was lost by 
his sin, made to be a partaker of the divine nature, and 
live a life hid with Christ in God. He acts no more by 
his mere human will, as before ; he says, yet not I, but 
Christ, liveth in me. God is now revealed in him; he is 
not a sole, simple, human nature ; but he is a human na- 
ture occupied by the divine, living and acting in an inspired 
movement; — all which is signified by the declaration, that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. He is more than a 
human person, he is spirit; a human person, that is, per- 
vaded, illuminated, swayed, exalted, empowered, and 
finally to be glorified by the life and Spirit of God devel- 
oped freely in him. This emphatically is regeneration. 
It can not be fully defined by looking simply at the man 
himself. He must be regarded as in relation to another 
being. He is really parted from sin and quickened in a 
spirit of life, only as he is restored to God and received 
into the glorious occupancy of the divine nature. 

But whether we regard the change as a change in the 
soul's ruling love, or in the higher form of it here recog- 
nized, makes little difference ; for, in fact, neither of these 
two will be found separated from the other. If a man's 
ruling love is changed, he will, of course, be altered in 



REGENERATION. 121 

"his relation to God, and restored to oneness with him 
And if he is restored to that oneness, his ruling love will 
be changed. There will be no precedence of time in one 
to the other. They will be rigidly coincident. They will 
even be mutual conditions one of the other. No man will 
ever be united to God, except in and by a love that em- 
braces or <?ntemples God. No man ever w-ill be changed 
in his ruling love, except in the embrace of God, and His 
revelation in the soul. The consequences therefore of the 
change will be such as belong to both. The soul is now 
entered into rest ; rest in love, rest in God. It is flooded 
also with a wondrously luminous joy; its wdiole horizon 
is filled with light; the light of a new love, the light 
of God revealed within. It has the beginning of true bless- 
edness ; because God himself and the principle of God's 
own blessedness are in ifc. It settles into peace; for 
now it is at one with God and all the creatures of God. It 
is filled with the confidence of hope ; because God, who is 
wholly given himself to a right love, will never forsake it, 
in life or death. It is free to good, inclined to good; for 
the good love reigns in it, and it would even have to deny 
itself not to do the works of love. It consciously knows 
God, within ; for God is there now in a new relation, love 
present to love, love answering to love. There is no aliena- 
tion, or separation, but oneness. If a man love me, says 
the Saviour, he will keep my w^ords, and my Father will 
love him, and we w T ill come unto him and make our abode 
with him. That abode in the soul is a new condition of 
divine movement ; for it is in the movement of God. All 
things, of course, are new. Life proceeds from a new cen- 
ter, of which God is the rest and prop. The bible is a 
new book, because there is a light in the soul by which to 

11 



122 KEGENERATION. 

read it. Duties are new, because the divine love the soul 
is in has changed all the relations of time and the aims of 
life- The saints of God on earth are no longer shunned, 
but greeted in new terms of celestial brotherhood. The 
very world itself is revealed in new beauty and joy to the 
min i, because it is looked upon with another and different 
love, and beheld as the symbol of God. • 

But let this one caution be observed. You are likely 
to be more attracted by the consequences of the change 
than by the change itself. But with the consequences you 
have nothing to do. God will take care of these. It 
may be that your mind will be so artificial, or so confused, 
as to miss the consequences for a time, after the reality is 
passed. But God will bring them out in his own good 
time, perhaps gradually, certainly in the way that is best 
for you. Let him do his own work, and be it yours to 
look after nothing but the new love. This brings me to 
speak, as I shall do in the briefest manner possible, — 

III. Of the manner in which the change, already de- 
scribed, is to be effected. 

To maintain that such a change can be manipulated, or 
officially passed, by a priest, in the rite of baptism, is no 
better than a solemn trifling with the subject. Indeed, so 
plain is this, that a sober argument, instituted to prove the 
contrary, is itself a half surrender of the truth. " Born 
of water and of the Spirit," says our Lord, and the lan- 
guage is a Hebraism, which presents the water as the sym- 
bol and the Spirit as the power of the change. 

Equally plain is it that the change is not to be effected, 
by waiting for some new creating act of God, to be literally 
passed on the soul. Whoever thinks to compliment the 



REGENERATION. 123 

sovereignty of God in that manner, mocks both himself 
and God. The change, as we have seen, passes only bj; 
consent and a free concurrence with God. God -will nevei 
demolish a sinner's personality. 

As little is it to be accomplished by any mere willing, 
or change of purpose, apart from God. There must be a 
change of purpose, a final, total, sweeping change of all 
purpose, but that of itself will not change the soul's love, 
least of all will it be a birth of God into the soul. A man 
can as little drag himself up into a new reigning love, as 
he can drag a Judas into paradise. Or, if we say nothing 
of this, how can he execute a change, that consists in the 
revelation of God, bv acting on himself? "Born of God/ 7 
remember, is the christian idea, not born of self-exercise ; 
" created anew in Christ Jesus," not self-created. You must 
get beyond your own mere will, else you will find, even 
though you strain your will to the utmost for a hundred 
years, that, while to will is present, you perform not. 
You can not lift this bondage, or break this chain, or burst 
open a way into freedom through this barrier, till you can 
say; — I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord; for the 
law of the spirit of life hath made me free from the law 
of sin and death. 

The question then recurs, how shall this change be 
effected? The whole endeavor, I answer, on your part 
must be God-ward. In the first place, you must give up 
every purpose, end, employment, hope, that conflicts with 
God and takes jjou away frcm him. Ilence what is said 
in so many forms of self-renunciation. Hence the require- 
ment to forsake all. It is on the ground that, in your life 
of sin, you are altogether in self-love, centered in yourself, 
living for yourself, making a god of your own objects and 



124 HE GENE RATION. 

works. These occupy the soul, fill it, bear rale in it, and 
God can not enter. You must make room for God, create a 
void for him to fill, die to yourself that Christ may live 
within. 

But this negative work of self-clearing is not enough. 
There must be a positive reaching after God, an offering 
up of the soul to him, that he may come and dwell in it 
and consecrate it as his temple. For, as certainly as the 
light will pour into an open window, just so certainly will 
God reveal himself in a mind that is opened to his approach. 
Now this opening of the mind, this reaching after God, is 
faith; and hence it is that so much is made of faith. For 
God is revealed outwardly, in the incarnate life and death 
of Jesus, in order that he may present himself in a man- 
ner level to our feeling, and quickening to our love, and 
so encourage that faith by which he may come in, to re-es- 
tablish his presence in us. For God, who commanded the 
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, 
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in 
the face of Jesus Christ. 0, it is there that the true God 
shines — let him shine into our hearts ! Jesus, if we under- 
stand him, is the true manifestation of Gocl, and he is mani- 
fested to be the regenerating power of a new divine life, 
By his beautiful childhood, by his loving acts and words, 
by his sorrowful death, God undertakes to impregnate our 
dead hearts with his love, and so to establish himself eter- 
nally in us. What is said of the Spirit is said of him, as 
being also the Spirit of Jesus. For, in highest virtuality, 
they are one, even as Christ himself declares, when dis- 
coursing of the promised Spirit, — "I will come to you," 
"but ye see me." Beceive him, therefore, as receiving 
Christ, and him as the accepted image of God, arid this 



REGENERATION. 125 

will \ e your faith, this the regeneration of your love, and 
this the token of your new connection with God. 

Allow no artificial questions of before and after to detain 
you here, as debating whether Christ, or the Spirit, or 
the faith, or the new born love, must be first. Enough to 
know that, if your faith is conditioned by the Spirit, so is 
the victory of the spirit conditioned by your faith ; that 
here you have all these mercies streaming upon you, and 
that nothing effectual can be done, till your faith meets 
them and they are revealed in your faith. Enough to 
know that, if the faith is to be God's work, it is also to be 
your act, and it can not be worked before it is acted. Let 
Christ also be your help in this acting of faith and this re- 
ceiving of God, even as he set himself to give it in his 
conversation with jSTicodemus; going directly on to speak 
of himself and the grace brought down to sinners in his 
person, declaring that, as Moses lifted up the brazen ser- 
pent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted 
up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but 
have everlasting life. He brings the divine love down to 
this most wondrous attitude, the cross, that we may there 
drop out our sin, and receive into our faith the love, the 
God of love expressed. And therefore it is represented 
that Christ ever stands before the door and knocks for ad- 
mission, with a promise that, if any man open the door 
(which is faith,) he will come in and sup with him. Chris- 
tianity is God descending to the door to get admission- this 
is the grand philosophy of the incarnation. God is just 
what you see him here, and lie comes to be revealed in you 
as he is presented before you. Thus received, you are born 
again, born of God. A new love enters, God enters, and 
eternal life begins. 

11* 



128 REGENERATION 

Shall le enter thus with you? How many of you 
are there that ought to hear this call. And no one of you 
is excluded. You may have come hither to-day with no 
such high intention. Still the call is to you. If you ask 
who? how many? when? all, I answer, all, and that to-day. 
Do you not see a glorious simplicity in this truth of re- 
generation! How beautiful is God in the light of it, how 
deep in love Christ Jesus and his cross, how close, in all 
this, comes the tenderness and winning grace of your God ! 
No matter if you did not think of receiving him, are you 
going to reject him? Is it nothing to be so exalted, so 
divinely ennobled? Have you fallen so low that no such 
greatness can attract you ? 

Then be it so. Have it as confessed that, when you saw 
the true gate open, you would not enter. Go back to your 
sins. Plunge into your little cares, fall down to your base 
idols, creep along through the low affinities of your sin, 
make a covenant with hunger and thirst, and hide it from 
you, if you can, that you were made for God, made to live 
in the consciousness of Him, as a mind irradiated by His 
spirit, quickened by his life, cleared by His purity. But 
if you can not be attracted by this, let it be no won- 
der, call it no severity, that Christ has not opened heaven 
to you. No wonder is it to him, even if it be to you, and 
therefore he says, whispers it to you kindly, but faithfully, 
as you turn yourself away, — "Marvel not that I said unto 
you ye must be born again. 



VII. 

THE PERSONAL LOVE AND LEAD OF CHRIST. 

Jorx x. 3. — " And he calleth his own sheep by name and 
leadeth therm out.' 1 

In this parable, Christ is a shepherd, and his people are 
his flock. And two points, on which the beauty and sig- 
nificance of the parable principally turn, are referred to in 
the text, which might not be distinctly observed by one 
who is not acquainted with the peculiar manner of the 
eastern shepherds. They have, in the first place, a name 
for every sheep, and every sheep knows its name when it 
is called. And then the shepherd does not drive the flock, 
as we commonly speak, but he leads them, going before. 
To these two points, or to the instruction contained under 
these two analogies, I now propose to call your attention. 

I. He calleth his own sheep by name. As we have 
names for dogs and other animals, which they themselves 
know, so it was with the eastern shepherds and their flocks. 
This fact is shown historically, by many references. It is 
to this, for example, that Isaiah refers when he represents 
the Almighty Creator as leading out the starry heavens, 
like a shepherd leading his flock; — Lift up your eyes and 
behold who hath created these things, that brin^eth out 
their h number; he calleth them all by names. 

The shepherd in this view is not as one who keeps a hive 
of bees, knowing well the hive, but never any particular 



128 THE PEKSOUAL LOVE 

bee in it, but he has a particular recognition of everj 
sheep, has a name for every one, teaches every one to know 
that name and follow at the call. This also is sigmifled in 
the words that immediately follow, — The sheep follow 
Linij for they know his voice, — words that refer, not so 
much to the mere tones of his voice, as to the feet thai 
ne is able, as a stranger is not, to call the names ihey are 
wont to answer as their own. 

Under this analogy stands the tender and beautiful truth, 
that Christ holds a particular relation to individual persons , 
knows them, loves them, watches for them, leads them individu* 
ally, even as if calling them by name. 

In this respect, the parable is designed to counteract and 
correct, what has in all ages been the common infirmity of 
Christian believers; — they believe that God has a real care 
of the church and of all great bodies of sainis, but how diffi- 
cult is it to imagine that he ever particularly notes, or per- 
sonally recognizes them. They know that God has a vast 
empire, and that the cares and counsels of his love include 
immense numbers of minds, and they fall into the impres- 
sion that he must needs deal with them in the gross, or a/» 
noting only generals, just as they would do themselves. 
They even take an air of philosophy in this opinion, ask- 
ing how we can imagine that so great a being takes a par- 
ticular notice of, and holds a particular and personal rela- 
tion to, individual men. There could not be a greater 
mistake, even as regards the matter of philosophy ; for the 
relation God holds to objects of knowledge is different, io 
all respects, from that which is held by as. Our genera] 
terms, man. tree, insect, flower, are the names of particular, 
or single specimens, extended, on the ground of a per- 
ceived similarity, to kinds or species. They come, in this 



AND LEAD OF CHKIST. 12^ 

manner, to stand for millions of particular men, treea^ 
insects, flowers, that we do not and never can know. 
They are, to just this extent, words of ignorance ; only 
we are able, in the use, to hold right judgments of innu- 
merable particulars we do not know, and have the words, 
93 far, as words of wisdom. But Grod does not generalize 
i?i this manner, getting up general terms under which to 
handle particulars, which, as particulars, he does not know. 
He is not obliged to accommodate his ignorance, or shoi t- 
ness of perception, by any such splicing process in words, 
His knowledge of wholes is a real and complete knowledge 
It is a knowledge of wholes, as being a distinct knowledge 
of particulars. Indeed, whatever particulars exist, or by 
him are created, he must first have thought ; and there- 
fore they were known by him, as being thought, even be- 
fore they became subjects of knowledge in the world of 
fact. Holding in his thought the eternal archetypes of 
kinds and species, he also thought each individual in its 
particular type, as dominated by the common archetype. 
So that all things, even things most particular, are known 
or thought by him eternally, before they take existence in 
time. When he thinks of wholes or kinds therefore — of 
society, the church, the nation, the race, he knows nothing 
of them in our faint, partial way of generalization, but ho 
knows them intuitively, through and through; the wholes 
in the particulars, the particulars in the wholes; knows 
them in their types, knows them in their archetypes, knows 
them in their genesis out of both ; so with a knowledge 
that is more than verbal, a solid, s}'stcmatic, specific knowl- 
edge. Nay, it is more, — a necessary, inevitable knowledge*, 
for the sun can no more shine on the world, as in the gross, 
without touching every particular straw and atom with his 



130 THE PEESOKAL LOVE 

light, than God can know, or love whole bodies of saiut^ 
without knowing and loving every individual saint. In 
one view, it requires no particular act of tenderness, or 
condescension in him ; it is the sublime necessity of his 
Perfect Mind. Being a perfect mind, and not a mere spark 
of intelligence like us, he can not fall into the imperfec- 
tions and shorten himself to the half-seeing of our contriv- 
ance, when we strain ourselves to set up generals, in a 
way to piece out and hide our ignorance. 

And yet we could not wean ourselves of this folly, 
could not believe that our God has a particular notice of 
us and a particular interest in our personal history. And 
this was one of the great uses of the incarnation ; it was 
to humanize God, reducing him to a human personality, 
that we might believe in that particular and personal love, 
in which he reigns from eternity. For Christ was visibly 
one of us, and we see, in all his demonstrations, that he 
is attentive to every personal want, woe, cry of the world. 
When a lone woman came up in a crowd to steal, as it 
were, some healing power out of his person, or out of the 
hem of his garment, he would not let her off in that im- 
personal, unrecognizing way ; he compelled her to show 
herself and to confess her name, and sent her away with 
his personal blessing. He pours out, everywhere, a par- 
ticular sympathy on every particular child of sorrow; he 
even hunts up the youth he has before healed of his blind- 
ness, and opens to him, persecuted as he is for being healed, 
the secrets of his glorious Messiahship. The result, accord- 
ingly, of this incarnate history is that we are drawn to a 
different opinion of God ; we have seen that he can love 
as a man loves another, and that such is the way of his 
love. He has tasted deatli we say, not for all men only, 



AND LEAD OF CHUIST. 131 

bat for every man. TTe even dare to say. for me, — 
who loved me and gave himself for me. Nay, he goes 

d further than this himself, calling: its friends, and 
claiming that dear relationship with us; friends, because 
he is on the private footing of friendship and personal 
confidence ; — The servant knowetk not what his Lord doeth, 
but I have called you friends. He even goes beyond this, 
promising a friendship so particular and personal that it 
shall be a kind of - :. or cypher of mutual understand- 
open to no other; a new white stone given by his 
king, and in the stone a new name written, which no man 

weth saving: he that I : :• .-iveth it. 
Indeed, I might go on to show, from every particular 
work and turn of th: - _ j] el, how intensely personal it is. 
What is communion th: nunion with partieu- 

- :>uls ? Is it the communion or fellowship of God that 
he reaches only great bodies of men? If he promises com- 
fort or support, whom does he comfort or support, when 
he touches no individual >n ? The promises to 

prayer — whom he hear, when he hears the prayer of 

nobody in particular, and for nothing in particular? The 
work of th - Spirit in —what is it, in all its 

grees and modes ; in their calling, their guidance, their 
Eanctification : what can it 1 _ined that he does which 

is not personal, the bestowment of a convincing, illumin- 
ating, d] • to, and 
the in igent 

-on, at just the point of his particular want, sin, sor- 
row, prejr s to exactly meet his personality at 
that particular time \ We speak, indeed, of the Iloly Spirit 
as falling on communit blies, 1 t we D 
suppose that he touches the _ ral body and no 



132 THE PERSONAL LOYE 

particular person. On the contrary, if we understand 
ourselves, lie reaches the general body only by and 
through individuals ; save that there is an effect of mutual 
excitement, which is secondary and comes from their sense 
of what is revealed in each other, under the power of the 
Spirit in each. How then can it be imagined that God 
effectually calls any person by his Spirit, without dispens- 
ing a grace most distinctly and even adaptively personal? 

So it is, in short, with every thing included in the gospel 
as a grace of salvation; every thing in the renewing, 
fashioning, guidance, discipline, sanctification, and final 
crowning of an heir of glory. His Saviour and Lord is 
over him and with him, as the good shepherd, calling him 
by name ; so that he is finally saved, not as a man, or some 
one of mankind, led forth, by his Lord, in the general 
flock, but as the Master's dear Simon, or James, or 
Alpheus, or Martha, whose name is so recorded in the 
Lamb's book of life. 

And, in this view, it is, I suppose, that the church, in 
baptizing her children, takes there, at the font, with a most 
beautiful and touching propriety, what she calls the 
" Christian name;" as if it were Christ's own gift; a name 
bestowed by him, in which he recognizes the child's dis- 
cipleship, and which, as often as it is spoken, he is himself 
to recognize as the calling of his Master's voice; — And he 
calleth his own sheep by name. 

Consider now the — 

II. Point of the text — he leadeth them out. It is not 
said, you observe, that the shepherd driveth them out> for 
that was not the manner of shepherds, but that he leadeth 
them, going before to call them after him. This, indeed, 



ANE LEAD OF CHRIST. 133 

is expressly and formally said in the next verse — and when 
he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and 
the sheep follow him. Hence those poetic figures of the 
Old Testament — The Lord is my shepherd, he leadeth me 
beside the still waters. Thou leddest thy people, like a 
flack, by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Give ear, 
shepherd, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock. The same 
custom of going before the flock pertains, even now, it is 
said, in the sheep-walks of Spain. 

"What a beautiful image, or picture, to represent the 
attitude and personal relationship of Jesus among his fol- 
lowers; — That he ': : not drive them on heft w as a her 

'.but gc e himself, leading them into 

paths that he hi -. : : . d dangers he has met. and sacr 
he has borne / ding them after him and to be only 

:s. He leadeth them out. 

If driving could do any good, he might well enough 
drive his flock as a bodv, caring: nothing for anv one of 
them in particular ; but, if he is going to draw them after 
him, he must work upon their inclinations, draw them !y 
their personal favor to him, and must therefore know them 
personally, and call them to follow, as it were, by name. 
Just the difference will be observed in this matter that per- 
tains between the eastern shepherds and those of the v 
and north. Xo sooner do we come upon this la* -liion 

of driving flocks a-field, than we see the noting, knowing 
and calling of particular sheep disappear. When the 
driving and thrusting fore becomes the manner, there 

is no need of getting any one of them under a power of 
confidence and attraction, no need of noting them i 
vidually at all. So, if driv re in place, Christ mi 

well enough let fall the fir Lird his flock. 

12 



134 THE PERSONAL LOVE 

and drive then out, as he drove Lot's family, or his vain- 
hearted wife, out of the city. But the best use that could 
be made of such a flock, after all, would be to turn them 
into pillars of salt and let them stand. No disciple is a 
ieal disciple till he becomes a follower, going after the 
shepherd, as one that follows by name, and is drawn by 
love. 

Here then is the beauty and glory of Christ, as a Re- 
deemer and Saviour of lost man, that he goes before, 
always before, and never behind his flock. He begins 
with infancy, that he may show a grace for childhood. He 
is made under the law, and carefully fulfills all righteous- 
ness there, that he may sanctify the law to us, and make 
it honorable. He goes before us in the bearing of tempta- 
tions, that we may bear them after him, being tempted ic 
all points like as we are, yet without sin. He taught us 
forgiveness by forgiving himself his enemies. f He went 
before us in the loss of all things, that we might be able 
to follow, in the renouncing; of the world and its dominion. 
The works of love that he requires of us, in words, are 
preceded and illustrated by real deeds of love, to which 
he gave up all his mighty powers from day to day. Hr- 
bore the cross himself that he commanded us to take up 
and bear after him. Requiring us to hate even life for the 
gospel's sake, he went before us in dying for the gospel , 
Buffering a death most bitter at the hand of enemies exas- 
perated only by his goodness, and that when, at a word 
he might have called to his aid whole legions of angels, and 
driven them out of the world. And then he went before 
us in the bursting of the grave and the resurrection from 
it; becoming, in his own person, the first fruits of them 
that slept. And, finally, he ascended and passed withiu 



iND LEAD OF CHRIST. 135 

the veil before us, as our forerunner, whom we are to fol- 
low even there. In all which, he is our shepherd, going 
before us, and never behind ; calling, but never driving ; 
bearing all the losses he calls us to bear ; meeting all the 
dangers, suffering all the cruelties and pains which it ia 
given us to suffer, and drawing us to follow wheie he 
leads, 

And then we see what kindred spirit entered into the 
teachers that he gave to lead his flock. They were 
such as followed him in the regeneration; going up at 
last, according to his promise, to sit on thrones of glory 
with him. And it is remarkable that the apostles took it 
as incumbent on them always, in their Master's law, to re- 
quire nothing of others in which they were not forward 
themselves. Thus, when Paul says, once and again — I 
beseech you be ye followers of me ; brethren, be followers 
together of me ; it has a sound, taken as it may be taken, 
of conceit, or vanity ; but, when we look upon him as a 
man who goes after Christ, in the ways of scorn and suf- 
fering patience; in labors more abundant, in stripes above 
measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft, receiving 
more than once his forty stripes save one, beaten with 
rods and stoned out of cities, running the gauntlet through 
all sorts of perils, in weariness and painfulness, in watch- 
3 often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold 
and nakedness, accounted as the filth of the world and the 
offscouring of all things — when we see him tramping on 
heavily thus, bearing his Master's dark flag of patience 
and loss, and calling others to follow, we only see that lie 
has taken Christ's own spirit and despises even to send the 
flock before him, where he does not lead himself. 

Ah! we have seen things different from this; teacher? 



136 THE PERSONAL LOVE 

that bind heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, 
which they themselves will not so much as lighten with 
the touch of their fingers ; priests and confessors that feed 
their lusts out of the charities extorted from the poor, im- 
posing on them loads of penance in turn, to humble them 
and keep them in subjection; philanthropists publishing 
theories and great swelling words of equality, and tapering 
off in the commendation of virtues they themselves do not 
practice, and even inwardly distaste. All such are men 
that drive a flock. But Christ, the true shepherd, the 
eternal Son of God, wants nothing in his flock that he does 
not show in himself. He goes before them, bearing all the 
bitterest loads of sacrifice and facing all the fiercest terrors 
himself, only calling them gently to come and follow. 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and 
learn of me. My yoke is easy and my burden light." 

The uses and applications of this subject are many. The 
time allows me to name only a few that are most practical. 

1. A great mistake, or false impression, held by most 
worldly minds, and even by some who profess to be dis- 
ciples, is here corrected ; viz., the mistake of regarding the 
christian life as a legal and constrained service. It is as 
if the flock were driven by the shepherd, and not as if it 
were led by the shepherd's call going before. In this 
image, or figure, is beautifully represented the freedom oi 
the disciple. He is one who is led by a personal influence, 
one who hears the voice and answers to the name by which 
he is called. He could not be thrust on, as in a crowd, 
by mere force, or fear. Christ wants to lead men by their 
love, their personal love to him, and the confidence of his 



AND LEAD OF CHRIST. 137 

personal love to them. And therefore the representation 
is, not that he is a shepherd going behind, with dogs, to 
gather in the flock, and keep them before him, but that he 
draws them after him, and gets them into such a training 
of confidence, that they will hear his call and follow. Tho 
whole relation, therefore, of discipleship is a relation of 
liberty. Xo one goes to his duty because he must, but only 
because his heart is in it. His inclinations are that way. 
for his heart is in the Master's love, and he follows him 
gladly. It no doubt seems to you, my friends, when you 
look on only as strangers to Christ, that this must be a hard 
and dry service ; for you see no attraction in it. But the 
reason is that your heart is not in it. "With a new heart, 
quickened by the grace of Christ, all this would be changed. 
It will then seem wholly attractive. All the currents of 
tout love will run that wav, and the freest freedom of 
your nature will be to go after Christ. No sacrifice will 
be hard, no service a burden. The wonder now will be 
that all men do not rush in after Christ, to be his eager 
followers. God grant that even to-day you may have 
this truth, as an experience, in the choice of Christ, and 
the renewing of his promised Spirit. 

Brethren, are there some of you that hold this same im- 
pression of the life of duty ! If so, if you have no knowl- 
edge of this freedom in Christ, the sign is a dark one for 
you. Perhaps it is not exactly the same impression that 
you hold. It may be that you have it only in a degree, 
accordingly as you are over-legal in your conceptions of 
duty, and rob yourself, in that manner, of its comforts, 
Let your mistake be now corrected. See, in particular. 
that Christ is not behind yon but before, calling and draw- 
ing you on. He wants your faith, wants your love, not a 

12* 



138 THE PERSONAL LOVE 

minute, and scrupulous, and careful piling up of legalities. 
You are not to stand off, doing something for him that he 
is to examine and report upon as accepted, by statute con- 
ditions ; but you are to go after him, and be with him, and 
keep along in his train, feeding in his pasture, and follow- 
ing where he leads. This is the liberty, the beautiful lib- 
erty of Christ. Claim your glorious privilege, in the name 
of a disciple ; be no more a servant, when Christ will own 
you as a friend. 

2. AYe discover, in this subject, what to think of that 
large class of disciples who aspire to be specially faithful, 
and hold a specially high-toned manner of life, but are, 
after all, principally strenuous in putting others forward, 
and laying burdens upon others. Christ, we have seen, 
goes before when he leads, and so did his apostles, calling 
on the saints to follow. But there is a cheaper way some 
have, in which they beguile even themselves. It is a kind 
of righteousness with them that they have such stern prin- 
ciples of duty and sacrifice. How greatly are they scan- 
dalized too by the self-indulgence, the parsimony, the show, 
the pleasures, the vanities of others, who profess the chris- 
tian name. And in all this they may be sincere and not 
hypocritical. They only find it so much easier to be stiff 
in their judgments, and self-renouncing in their words and 
exhortations, that they slide over, only the more unwit- 
tingly, their own looseness and deficiency, in the very 
things th?y insist on. How many preachers of Christ foil 
into just this snare: pray for us, brethren, for our tempt- 
ation is great. Christians of this class commonly have it 
as a kind of merit, and how many christian ministers repeat 
the same thing, that they never ask it of others to follow 
them. God forbid that they should indulge in any such 



A5P LEAP OF CZ?.IS7. I:/ 

wmnrifl h thai I Yes^ God forbid, indeed, the conceit, for 

:: .' : ' : :i.f . i ' ~A " :":: A : A : riArs 

:t t"t: :Ah :: is Ati: :AA~ ->rs : m:: :.: ;:..: "Lt:::^: 
tA,: A-t !:■ :_;: :AA~ ?lr> 11 1 i :: \; A 
i: ~ :: i = A = — : AA . As— :""_:: :'_." 

. A i:- r - : Ai __ i: is A A 

and his first messengers, that they go before, to lead in all 
5..v:r.z:f 11... ruArnr: .;: _ zrsi "_:_-:—_";- "^_i:i<>rver 
:_•:■-'..— "■ ::•: i ::1:: ; . I '. ;'.:-;":• :_i' A .-.*_: :-:■.. Ai: :lrre 
: Jmost none of us who do not slide into this infirmity, 
complimenting ourselves on the high principles we hold, 
and the severe standards we set up, in our words and 
judgments, when, in our practice, we fill low enough to 
i ; -.- - i: : :: 11 Ame 

Ai A A -.i r. 

--■"_.:: A -.::;.:_:.- As :: A rs 

How much more and more genuinely modest should we 
be, if we judged only as we practiced and set forward 
others in words, only as we fortify words by example. 
L;: is \:i A:s:;.:A ; :r= A — A Aii : A .: ~-r :.:: i:: —A-: 
we talk, or stand for with our words, but what we do and 
become. 

3. Consider, in this subject, what is true of any real 
disciple, who : ing from Christ ; viz^ that his Holy 

Shepherd, folding the flock and caring for it as a shep- 
herd should, does not let him go, or take it only as a fact 
that the flock is diminished by one, not caring by what 
one. He knows what one it is, and, if the wanderer will 
A:::i A? :i;- A;-;..: A: A A..:" ..Aii As nil-:-. Tie 
love of Chi personal and particular! 

and he watches for his flock with a directly personal care. 
Do nnt imagine then, if you consciously begin to fell CfB, 



140 THE PEKSONAL LOYE 

or stray, that you are no longer cared for by the Shepherd. 
Christ follows you with his personal and particular love, 
and will not let you go. That same tenderness which 
melted the heart of an apostle, when he said — "who loved 
me and gave himself for me/' pursues you still. It is faith- 
ful, patient, forgiving, and true ; it waits and lingers, it 
whispers and calls, saying, " will ye also go away ; w holding 
on upon you by a personal and persistent love, that will not 
be content till you are gathered back into the fold, to be, 
as before, a follower. And the same is true where the 
love of many waxes cold, and whole bodies of disciples 
are chilled by worldliness, or carried away by common 
temptations ; it is not the mass only, or the general flock, 
that Christ regards. Each one he follows and calls, as 
truly as if he were the only one. The wrong they do 
him, and the grief he feels, is personal. By name and 
privately he deals with each, gathering him back, if pos- 
sible, to prayer and holy living, to faith, and sacrifice, and 
works of love. By these private reproofs, and these ten- 
der and personal remonstrances, brethren, he is calling 
after all you that stray from him to-day. And, if you 
think you have personal apologies, or have been stolen 
away by temptations you could not detect, he knows 
exactly what is true, and will every true allowance make, 
and, as being faithful to you, he will make no other. 
Whatever grace you want to bind you up and establish 
you, he waits to bestow. He will not only forgive you. 
readily and completely, but he will embrace you heartily, 
and take you again to his confidence; the same sweet 
personal confidence in which you stood before. O, thou 
wavering, faltering, failing disciple ! come thou, at his call, 
and see ! 



AND LEAD OF CHRIST. 141 

Finally, consider the close understanding with Christ, 
the ennobled confidence and dignity of a true discipleship. 
To be a disciple, is to have the revelation of- Christ, and 
the secret witness of his love in the soul. It implies a most 
intimate and closely reciprocal state. According to the 
representation of the parable, the Holy Shepherd knows 
his own sheep with a particular knowledge, and calleth 
them by name ; while they, on their part, know his voice 
and follow. A stranger will they not follow, but flee from 
him ; for they know not the voice of strangers. And he 
also says himself, — I am the good shepherd and know 
my sheep, and am known of mine. 0, this deep and 
blessed knowledge — the knowledge of Christ — to be in the 
secret witness of his love, to be in his guidance, to be 
strong in his support, to be led into the mind of God by 
him, and have our prayers shaped by his inward teaching ; 
bo to be set in Grod's everlasting counsel, and be filled with 
the testimony that we please him, this, all this it is to know 
Christ's voice. Happy are we, brethren, if the sense of 
this knowledge be in us. 

And what can fill us with a loftier inspiration, or lift ua 
into a more sublime and blessed confidence, than this, — 
the fact that Christ, the Eternal Shepherd, has a personal 
recognition of us, leading us on, by name, and calling us 
to follow. No matter whether he call us into ways of gain 
or of suffering, of honor or of scorn ; it is all one, with 
such a leader before us. Nay, if we go down to sound 
the depths of sorrow, and ennoble the pains of sacrifice, 
and perfume the grave of ignominy, what are these but a 
more inspiring and more godlike call, since he is now our 
leader even here. 0, my brethren, here is our misery, that 
we think to go above Christ, and find some cheaper way 



342 LOVE OF CHRIST. 

when, if we could truly descend to his level of sacrifice, 
and take his cross to follow, we should be raised in feeling 
and power, ennobled in impulse, glorified with him in his 
joy. After all, the secret of all our dryness, the root of 
all cur weakness, our want of fruit and progress, our dearth 
and desolation, is, that we can not follow Christ. First, we 
can not believe that he has any particular care of us, ot 
personal' interest in our life, and then, falling away, at that 
point, from his lead, we drop into ourselves, to do a few 
casual works of duty, in which neither w r e nor others are 
greatly blessed. God forbid that w r e sacrifice our peace so 
cheaply. Let us hear, O, let us hear, to-day, the Shep- 
herd's voice, and, as he knows us in our sin, so let us go 
after him in his sacrifice. Let us claim that inspiration, 
that ennobled confidence, that comes of being truly with 
him. Folded thus in his personal care, and led by the 
calling of his voice, for which we always listen, let us take 
bis promise and follow, going in and out and finding 
pasture. 



VIII. 

LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 

Job xxxvii. 21. — "And now men see not the bright lighi 
which is in the clouds: but the wind passeth, and cleanseth 
tiiem." 

The argument is, let man be silent when God is dealing 
with him ; for he can not fathom God's inscrutable wisdom. 
Behold, God is great, and we know him not. God thun- 
dereth marvelously with his voice: great things cloeth he 
which we can not comprehend. Dost thou know the won- 
drous works of him that is perfect in knowledge ? Teach 
us what we shall say unto him ; for we can not order our 
speech by reason of darknesn. If a man speak, surely he 
shall be swallowed up. 

Then follows the text, representing man's life under tho 
figure of a cloudy day. The sun is in the heavens, and 
there is always a bright light on the other side of the 
clouds ; but only a dull, pale beam pierces through. Still, 
as the wind comes at length to the natural day of clouds, 
clearing them all away, and pouring in, from the whole 
firmament, a glorious and joyftil light, so will a grand 
clearing come to the cloudy and dark day of life, and a 
full effulgence of light, from the throne of God, will irra- 
diate all the objects of knowledge and experience. 

Our reading of the text, you will observe, substitutes 
for cleansing, clearing away, which is more intelligible. 
Perhaps, also, it is better to read "on the clouds," and not 



144 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD 

"in." Still, the meaning is virtually the same. The 
words, thus explained, offer three points which invite our 
attention. 

I. We live under a cloud, and see Ocd's way only by a 
dim light. 

II. God shines, at all times, with a bright light, above the 
cloud, and on the other side of it. 

III. This cloud of obscuration is finally to be cleared away. 

I. We live under a cloud, and see God's way only by a 
dim light. 

As beings of intelligence, we find ourselves hedged in 
by mystery on every side. All our seeming knowledge 
is skirted, close at hand, by dark confines of ignorance. 
However drunk with conceit we may be, however ready 
to judge every thing, we still comprehend almost nothing. 

What then does it mean ? Is God jealous of intelligence 
in us? Has he purposely drawn a cloud over his ways^ 
to baffle the search of our understanding ? Exactly con- 
trary to this ; he is a being who dwelleth in light, and calls 
us to walk in the lighi with him. He has set his works 
about us, to be a revelation to us always of his power and 
glory. His word he gives us, to be the expression of his 
will and character, and bring us into acquaintance with 
himself. His Spirit he gives us, to be a teacher and illu- 
minator within. By all his providential works, he is train- 
ing intelligence in us and making us capable of knowledge. 

No view of the subject, therefore, can be true that accuses 
him. The true account appears to be that the cloud, under 
which we are shut down, is not heavier than it must be. 
How can a being infinite be understood, or comprehended, 



LIGHT ON THE CLOUD, 145 

by a being finite ? And, when this being infinite has plana 
that include infinite quantities, times and relations, in which 
every present event is the last link of a train of causes 
reaching downward from a past eternity, and is to be con- 
nected also with every future event of a future eternity, 
how can a mortal, placed between these two eternities, with- 
out knowing either, understand the present fact, whatever 
it be, whose reasons are in both ? 

Besides, we have only just began to be; and a began 
existence is, by the supposition, one that has just begun to 
know, and has every thing to learn. How then can we 
expect, in a few short years, to master the knowledge of 
God and his universal kingdom? What can he be 
to such but a mystery? If we could think him out, 
without any experience, as we do the truths of arithmetic 
and geometry, we might get on faster and more easily. 
But God is not a mere thought of our own brain, as these 
truths are, but a being in the w T orld of substance, fact and 
event, and all such knowledge has to be gotten slowly, 
through the rub of experience. We open, after a few 
days, our infantile eyes and begin to look about, perceive, 
handle, suffer, act and be acted on, and, proceeding in this 
manner, we gather in, by degrees, our data and material 
of knowledge; and so, by trial, comparison, distinction, the 
study of effects and wants, of rights and wrongs, of uses 
and abuses, we frame judgments of things, and begin to 
pass our verdict on the matters we know. But how long 
will it take us to penetrate, in this manner, the real signifi- 
cance of God's dealings with us and the world, and pass a 
really illuminated judgment on them? And yet, if we 
but love the right, as the first father did before his sin, 
God will be revealed in us internally, as the object of our 

la 



146 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

love and trust, even from the first hour. He will not ap- 
pear to be distant, or difficult. AYe shall know him as a 
friend] j presence in our heart's love, and we shall have 
such a blessed confidence in him that if, in the outer world 
of fact and event, clouds and darkness appear to be round 
about him, we shall have the certainty within that justice 
and judgment are the habitation of his throne. Meanwhile, 
he will be teaching us graciously, and drawing us insen- 
sibly, through our holy sympathies, into the sense of his 
ways, and widening, as fast as possible, the circle of our 
human limitation, that we may expatiate in discoveries 
more free. And thus it comes to pass that, as the eyelids 
of the infant are shut down, at first, over his unpracticed 
eyes, which are finally strengthened for the open day, by 
the little, faint light that shines through them, so our finite, 
childish mind, saved from being dazzled, or struck blind, 
by God's powerful effulgence, and quickened by the gentle 
light that streams through his cloud, is prepared to gaze 
on the fullness of his glory, and receive his piercing bright- 
ness undimmed. 

But there is another fact less welcome that must not be 
forgot, when we speak of the darkness that obscures out 
knowledge of God. There is not only a necessary, but a 
guilty limitation upon us. And therefore we are not only 
obliged to learn, but, as being under sin, are also in a 
temper that forbids learning, having our mind disordered 
and clouded by evil. Hence, come our perplexities; for, 
as the sun can nol show distinctly what it is in the bottom 
of a muddy pool, so God can never be distinctly revealed in 
the depths of a foul and earthly mind. To understand a 
philosopher requires, they tell us, a philosopher ; to under- 
stand patriotism, requires a patriot; to understand purity 



LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 147 

one that is pure ; so, to understand God, requires a godlike 
spint. Having this, God will as certainly be revealed in 
the soul, as light through a transparent window. He that 
loveth knoweth God, for God is love. What darkness 
ihen must be upon a mind that is not congenially tempered, 
a mind unlike to Gocl, opposite to God, selfish, lustful, re- 
morseful, and malignant ! Even as an apostle says— Hav- 
ing the understanding darkened, being alienated from the 
life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because 
of the blindness of their heart. 

The very activity of reason, which ou^ht tobesret knowl- 
edsre, begets only darkness now, artificial darkness. We 
begin a quarrel with limitation itself, and so with God. 
He is not only hid behind thick walls of mystery, but he 
is dreaded as a power unfriendly, suspected, doubted, re- 
pugnantly conceived. Whatever can not be comprehend- 
ed, and how very little can be, is construed as one con- 
strues an enemy, or as an ill-natured child construes the 
authority of a faithful father. An evil judgement taken 
up yesterday prepares another to-day, and this another to- 
morrow, and so a vast complicated web of false judgments, 
in the name of reason, iff spread over all the subjects of 
knowledge. We fall into a state thus of general confusion, 
in which even the distinctions of knowledge are lost. 
Presenting our little mirror to the clear light of God, wo 
/'it have received true images of things, and gotten by 
degrees a glorious wealth of knowledge, but we break the 
mirror, in the perversity of our .sin, and offer only the 
shivered fragments to the light: when, of course, we see 
distinctly nothing. Then, probably enough, we begin to 
sympathize with ourselves and justify the ignorance we 
are in. wondering, if there be a God, that he should be so 



148 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD 

dark to us, or that lie should fall behind these walls of 
silence, and suffer himself to be only doubtfully guessed^ 
through fogs of ignorance and obscurity. Eeminded that 
he is and must be a mystery, we take it as a great hard- 
ship, or, it may be, an absurdity, that we are required to 
believe what we can not comprehend. We are perplexed 
by the mode of his existence and action — how can he fill 
all things, and yet have no dimensions ? How is it that 
he knows all things, before the things known exist ? Fore- 
knowing what we will do, how can we be blamed for what 
we were thus certain beforehand to do ? How is it that 
he creates, governs, redeems, and yet never forms a new 
purpose, or originates a new act, which is not from eternity? 
How is he infinitely happy, when a great many things 
ought to be, and are declared to be, repugnant or abhor- 
rent to his feeling ? How does he produce worlds out of 
nothing, or out of himself, when nothing else exists? 
How did he invent forms and colors, never having seen 
them ? 

Entering the field of supposed revelation, the difficulties 
are increased in number, and the mysteries are piled higher 
than before. God is here declared to be incarnate, in the 
person of Jesus Christ, and the whole history of this 
wonderful person is made up of things logically incom- 
patible. He is the eternal son of God, and the son of 
Mary ; he is Lord of all, and is born in a manger ; stills 
the sea by his word, and traveling on foot is weary ; asks, 
who convinceth me of sin? and pra} r s like one wading 
through all the deepest evils of sin; dies like a man 
and rises like a god, bursting the bars of death by his 
power. Even God himself is no more simply God, but a 
threefold mystery that mocks all understanding, — Father, 



LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 149 

Son, and Holy Ghost. Is it revelation, then, that onl^ 
burdens faith with mysteries more nearly impossible? 
Exactly so ; nothing is more clear to any really thoughtful 
person than that, until some high point is passed, God 
ought to be enveloped in greater mystery, and will be, the 
closer he is brought to the mind. Knowing nothing of 
him, he is no mystery at all; knowing a little, he is mys- 
tery begun; knowing more, he is a great and manifold 
deep, not to be fathomed. AVe are, and ought to be, over- 
whelmed by his magnitudes, till we are able to mount 
higher summits of intelligence than now. Or, if it be 
answered that, in some of these things, we have contra- 
dictions, and not mere difficulties, it is enough to reply 
that the highest truths are wont to be expressed in forms 
of thought and language that, as forms, are repugnant. 
Nor is it any fault of these mere instrumental contradic- 
tions that we can not reconcile them, if only they roll upon 
us senses of God's deep majesty and love, otherwise im- 
possible. Our amazement itself is but the vehicle of his 
truth. 

Turning next to the creative works of God, we find the 
cloud also upon these. The Lord by wisdom hath founded 
the earth, by understanding hath he established the 
heavens, there is no searching of his understanding; why 
ho created the worlds when he did, and not before; what 
he could have been doing, or what enjoyment having, 
previous to their creation ; and, if all things are governed 
by inherent laws, what more, as the universal governor f 
he can find any place to do since: — these are questions, 
again, before which speculative reason reels in amazement 
If the baffled inquirer then drops out the search after God. 
as many do, and says, — I will go down to nature, and it 

13* 



150 LIGHT ON IHE CLOUD. 

shall, at least, be my comfort that nature is intelligiblcj 
and even a subject of definite science, he shortly discovers 
that science only changes the place of mystery and leaves 
it unresolved. Hearing, with a kind of scientific pity. 
Job's question about the thunder, — who can understand 
the noise of his tabernacle? he at first thinks it something 
of consequence to say that thunder is the noise of electricity, 
and not of God's tabernacle at all. But he shortly finds 
himself asking, who can understand electricity? and then, 
at last, he is with Job again. So, when he hears Job ask, 
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven, — he recollects 
the great Newtonian discovery of gravity, and how, by 
aid of that principle, even the weights of the stars have 
been exactly measured, and their times predicted, and im- 
agines that, now the secrets of astronomy are out, the ordi- 
nances of heaven are understood. But here, again, it 
finally occurs to him to ask, what is gravity ? and forth- 
with he is lost in a depth of mystery as profound as that 
of Job himself. And so, asking what is matter, — what is 
life, animal and vegetable, — what is heat, light, attraction, 
affinity, — he discovers that, as yet, we really comprehend 
nothing, and that nature is a realm as truly mysterious 
even as God. Not a living thing grows out of the earth, 
or walks upon it, or flies above it ; not an inanimate object 
exists, in heaven, earth, or sea, which is not filled and cir- 
cled about with mystery as truly as in the days of Adam 
or Job, and which is not really as much above the under- 
standing of science, as the deepest things of God's eternity 
or of his secret life. 

But there is, at least, one subject that he must under- 
stand and know even to its center; viz., himself. Is he 
not a self-conscious being, and how can there be a cloud 



LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 151 

over that which is comprehended even by consciousness 
itself? Precisely contrary to this, there are more myste- 
ries and dark questions grouped in his own person, than he 
has ever met in the whole universe beside. He can not 
even trace, with any exactness, the process by which he has 
been trained to be what he is, or the subtle forces by which 
his character haa been shaped. Only the smallest fraction 
of his past history can he distinctly remember, all the rest 
is gone. Even the sins for which he must answer before 
God are gone out of his reach, and can no more be reck- 
oned up in order, till the forgotten past gives up its dead 
things, to be again remembered. As little can he discover 
the manner of his own spirit, how he remembers, perceives 
objects, compares them, and, above all, how he wills and 
what it is that drives him to a sentence against himself 
when he wills the wrong. He knows too that, in wrong, 
he is after self-advantage ; and every wrong, he also knew 
at the time, must be to his disadvantage ; why then did 
he do it ? He can not tell. The sin of his sin will be, 
when he is judged before God, that he can not tell. Even 
the familiar fact of his connection with a body is altogether 
inexplicable ; and why any act of his will should produce 
a motion of his body, he can no more discover than why 
it should produce a motion among the stars. The beating 
of his heart and the heaving of his lungs are equally mys- 
terious In his whole nature and experience, he is, in fact, 
a deep and inscrutable mystery to himself. God breathes 
unseen in his heart, and yet he wonders that God is so 
far off. Death comes in stealthily, and distills the fetal 
poison that will end his life, unseen and unsuspected. He 
goes down to his grave, not knowing, by any judgment 
of his own, apart from God's promise, (which he does not 



152 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

believe,) that he shall live again. "What shall be the man nei 
of his resurrection and with what body he shall come, he 
can as little comprehend, as he can the mystery of the in- 
carnation. 

Finding, therefore, God, nature, himself, overhung with 
this same cloud, it is not wonderful that he suffers bitter 
afflictions and galls himself against every corner of God's 
purposes. Why is society a weight so oppressive on the 
weak and the poor? If sin is such an evil, as it certainly 
is, why did the Creator, being Almighty, suffer it ? In- 
deed, there is almost nothing that meets us, between our 
first breathing and our graves, that does not, to an evil 
mind, connect, in one way or another, some perplexity, 
some accusing or questioning thought, some inference that 
is painful, or perhaps atheistical. Can it be ? Why should 
it be ? How can a good God let it be ? If he means to 
have it otherwise, is he not defeated? if defeated, is he 
God ? If he has no plan, how can I trust him ? if his 
plan will suffer such things, how then can I trust him ? — 
these are the questions that are continually crowding upon 
us. The cloud is all the while over us. He hath made 
darkness his pavilion and thick clouds of the skies. This 
man's prosperity is dark ; that man's adversity is dark. 
The persecutions of the good, the afflictions of the right- 
eous, the desolations of conquest, the fall of nations and 
their liberties, the extinction of churches, the sufferings of 
innocence, the pains of animals, the removal by death of 
genius and character just ripened to bless the world — there 
is no end to our dark questions. There are times, too, 
when our own personal experience becomes enveloped in 
darkness. We not only can not guess what it means, 01 
what God will do with us in it, but it wears a look contrary 



LIGHT OS THE CLOCD. 15S 

to what appear to be our just expectations. AY e are gi ie ved 
perplexed, confounded. Other men are blessed in things 
much worse. TTe ourselves have been successful in things 
for more questionable, and when our deserts were less. 
Wliat does it mean that God is covering his way, under 
these thick clouds of mystery and seeming caprice ? In 
short, we may sum it up, as a general truth, that nothing 
in the world is really luminous, to a mind unilluminated 
by religion ; and, if we say that the Christian walks in the 
light, it is not so much that he can always understand 
God as it is that he has confidence in him, and has him 
always near. 

Thus we live. Practically, much is known about God 
and his ways, all that we need to know ; but, speculatively, 
or bv the mere understanding, almost nothing, save thai 
we can not know. The believing 1 mind dwells in continual 
light ; for, when God is revealed within, curious and per* 
plexing questions are silent. But the mind that judges 
God, or demands a right to comprehend him before it be- 
lieves, stumbles, complains, wrangles, and finds no issue 
to its labor. Still there is light, and we pass on now to 
show, — 

II. That there is abundance of light on the other side 
of the cloud, and above it. 

This we might readily infer, from the fact that so much 
of light shines through. "When the clouds overhead- are 
utterly black, too black to be visible, we understand that 
it is night, or that the sun is absent ; but. when there is a 
practical and sufficient light for our works, we know that 
the sun is behind them, and we call it day. So it is when 
God spreadeth a cloud upon his throne. We could not 



154 LIGHT ON THE CLOUS. 

see even the mystery, if there were no light behind it, 
just as we could not see the clouds if no light shone 
through. 

The experience of every soul that turns to God is a con- 
vincing proof that there is light somewhere, and that which 
is brighu and clear. Was it a man struggling with great 
afflictions, an injured man crushed by heavy wrongs, was 
it a man desolated and broken down by domestic sorrows ; 
was it a rich man stripped by sore losses and calamities, 
was it a proud man blasted by slander; was it an atheist 
groping after curious knowledge and starving on the chaff 
of questions unresolved — be it one or another of these, 
for all alike were tormented in the same perplexities of the 
darkened anderstanding, every thing was dark and dry 
and empt) ; but when they come to Christ and believe in 
him, it is their common surprise to find how suddenly 
every thing becomes luminous. Speculatively, they un- 
derstand nothing which before was hidden, and yet there 
13 a wondrous glory shining on their path. God is revealed 
within, and God is light. The flaming circle of eternal 
day skirts the horizon of the mind. Their dark questions 
are forgot, or left behind. They are even become insig- 
nificant. Their dignitv is gone, and the soul, basking in 
the blessed sunshine of God's love, thinks it nothing, any 
more, if it could understand all mysteries. In all which it 
is made plain that, if we are under the cloud, there is yet 
a bright light above. 

It will also be found, as another indication, that things 
which, at some time, appeared to be dark, — afflictions, losses, 
trials, wrongs, defeated prayers, and deeds of suffering pa- 
tience yielding no fruit, — are very opt, afterward, to change 
color and become visitations of mercy. And so where 



LIGHT OH THE CLOUD. 155 

God was specially dark, lie commonly brings out, m the 
end, some good, or blessing in which the subject discovers 
that his Heavenly Father only understood his wants bettel 
than he did himself. God was dark in his way, only be- 
cause his goodness was too deep in counsel, for him to fol- 
low it to its mark. It is with him as with Joseph, gold 
into slavery, and so into the ride of a kingdom; or as it 
with Job, whose latter end, after he had been stripped 
of every thing, was more blessed than his beginning ; or 
as with Xehemiah, whose sorrowing and disconsolate look 
itself brought him the opportunity to restore the desola- 
tions over which he sorrowed. Even the salvation of the 
world is accomplished through treachery, false witness, 
and a cross. All our experience in life goes to show that 
the better understanding we have of God's dealings, the 
more satisfactory they appear. Things which seemed dark 
or inexplicable, or even impossible for God to suffer with- 
out wrong in himself, are really bright with goodness in 
the end. What then shall we conclude, but that, on the 
other side of the cloud, there is always a bright and glori- 
ous light, however dark it is underneath. 

Hence it is that the scriptures make so much of God's 
character as a light -giving power, and turn the figure about 
into so many forms. In God, they say, is light and no 
darkness at all. According to John's vision of the Lord — 
His countenance was as the sun that shineth in his strength. 
The image of him given by another apostle is even more 
sublime, — Who only hath immortality dwelling in light 
that no man can approach onto, — language, possibly, in 
which he had some reference to his own conversion, when 
a light, above the brightness of the sun, bursting upon 
him and shining round about him, seared his eye-halls so 



156 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

that afterward there fell off from them, as it had been, 
scales of cinder. God, therefore, he conceives to be light 
inapproachable, as figured in that experience. And proba- 
bly enough he would say that, as the astronomers in look- 
ing at the sun arm their sight with a smoky or colored 
medium, so the very clouds we complain of are mercifully 
interposed, in part, and rather assist than hinder our vision. 
It is little therefore to say, and should never be a fact in- 
credible, that however dark our lot may be, there is light 
enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empy- 
rean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of the 
world ; light enough to clear every difficult question, re- 
move every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic sus- 
picion, silence every hard judgment ; light enough to satisfy, 
nay to ravish the mind forever. Even the darkest things 
God has explanations for, and it is only necessary to be let 
into his views and designs, as when we are made capable 
of being we certainly shall, to see a transcendent wisdom 
and beauty in them all. At present, we have no capacity 
broad enough to comprehend such a revelation. We see 
through a glass darkly, but we see what we can. When 
we can see more, there is more to be seen. On the other 
side of the cloud there is abundance of light. This brings 
me to say, — 

III. That the cloud we arc under will finally break way 
and be cleared. 

On this point we have many distinct indications. Thus 
it coincides with the general analogy of God's works, to 
look for obscurity first, and light afterward. According 
to the scripture account of the creation, there was, first, a 
period of complete darkness; then a period of mist and 



LIGHT OX THE CLOC'D, 1 



Oi 



cloud, where the clay light is visible, bat not the sua; 

i :"_t sun beams out in a clear open sky, which is 
called, in a way of external description, the creation of the 
sun. How many of the animals begin their life at birth 
with their v- dosed, which are afterward opened to be- 
hold the world into which they have come. How many 
myriads of insects begin their existence underground, 
emerging afterward from their dark abode, to take winga 
and glitter in the srolden lisrht of day. If we observe the 
manner too of our own intellectual discoveries, we shall 
general the inquirer groping long and painfully un- 

der a cloud, trying and experimenting hi a thousand guess- 

:» no purpose, till finally a thought takes him and be- 
hold the difficulty is solved ! At a single flash, so to speak, 
the ligh: breaks in, and what before was dark is clear 
and simple as the day. Darkness first and light after- 
ward, this is the law of science universally. By so 
many and various analogies, we are led to expect that 
the cloud, under which we live in things spiritual, 
will finally be lifted, and the splendor of eternal glory 
poured around us. 

Our desire of knowledge, and the manner in which God 
man aeesl inflame that desire, indicate the same thincf. This 
desire he has planted naturally in us, as hunger is natural 
in our bodies, or the want of light in our b. And the 
a more certain indication that light is to be giv- 
en, than our d i know divine things is that we shall 
be permitted to k *hem. And the evidence is yet 
further inc: . in the fact that the good have a stroi 

re of this knowledge than mere nature b 
if w with the scripture, that the fear of the 1 

the beginning of kn_ j of it 

14 



158 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

come after. It is the glory of God, indeed, to conceal a 
thing, but not absolutely, or for the sake of concealment. 
He does it only till a mind and appetite for the truth is 
prepared, to make his revelation to. He gives us a dim 
light and sets us prying at the walls of myster} r , that he 
may create an appetite and relish in us for true knowledge. 
Then it shall be a joyful and glorious gift — drink to the 
thirsty, food to the hungry, light to the prisoner's cell. 
And he will pour it in from the whole firmament of lu> 
glor} r . He will open his secret things, open the bounda- 
ries of universal order, open his own glorious mind and 
his eternal purposes. 

The scriptures also notify us of a grand assize, or judg- 
ment, when the merit of all his doings with, us, as of our 
doings toward him, will be revised, and it appears to be a 
demand of natural reason that some grand exposition of 
the kind should be made, that we may be let into the man- 
ner of his government far enough to clo it honor. This 
will require him to take away the cloud, in regard to all 
that is darkest in our earthly state. Every perplexity 
must now be cleared, and the whole moral administration 
of God, as related to the soul, must be sufficiently ex- 
plained. Sin, the fall, the pains and penalties and disabili- 
ties consequent, redemption, grace, the discipline of the 
righteous, the abandonment of the incorrigibly wicked — all 
these must now be understood. God has light enough to 
shed on all these things, and he will not conceal it. He 
rs ill shine forth in glorious and transcendent brightness, un- 
masked by cloud, and all created minds,' but the incorrigi- 
ble outcasts and enemies of his government, will respond; — 
Alleluia, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power be 
unto the Lord our God ; for just and true are his judgments. 



li-jh: . :~ ihz :loud. 159 

Pr — haf istc .- the manner and measure of oiu 

ii:-^:"-. ::\ :lis :.;llr: :ei:l :_::ir r"_:ri:-;j= re-el:..::::: ;: 
the fbtare^ is not deal k :b>r that is one of the dark 

:_:___- :: nys: . present -tate But the lan- 

guage of seriptur .- i 3 i ble. It even declares that 

f hall see God as he is and the in: o aty of the expres- 
aon is au ± poss ibl the effects attributed to 

- _.- — him : sh = : him as he 

:all be d brated, in other 

his glory si transformed into a spirit 

. - : _ - ity reflecting his beauty, 
ennobled I It is even that our 

- rh tl be complete. 2";Tweknowin 
: :~. :_t:l -'_:"_'_ ---;- 1:_;-" r" r :: > ;-."s: — : ::: i:::~~. 7:- 
all knowG as be knows as is ::rtainly 
the stn _ si ration - : ssible, and it is probably hy- 

perboEo, L; : . i Ld s tji to be incredible that a finite 

mind should a : :,ny time in its eter:: 

it is c :mprehended by the in- 
". ' ' ~ - - 3 :hat there will 

Ige, and that th ' » 
lepths oi 
attaining 
~:ght of his 

I beautv in 

- 

C-ezi \y ::;■_;..- .::.;: ::-■.__ - :-/_. *"•'/. *;.e:L .•;■•:::--- :L_e: 
pow 3 - great 

ii:;i f -:::.:-::: .•"■:..:.:::._ : jrod'sw: :e w ;- v l:;: :L__:.: w ;•;/:, 
■nd 9 real lis] >:;:: _:" .ill :'.. ■_• :■"_;■:; Is :L:,: I,..:'-;::: • - L .-rv, 
is i".:'.:l-;ss : '..::■:; ~ed; for when our sin is xxmpletelj 

will b 
-.-S£ " - -If w/U | . | ire a. 



160 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

glorious unveiling of God and a vision of his beauty as 
it is. 

In what manner we shall become acquaini ed with God's 
mind, or the secrets of his interior life, whether through 
sume manifestation by the Eternal Word, like the incarnate 
appearing of Jesus, or partly in some way more direct, 
we can not tell. But the divine nature and plan will be 
open, doubtless, in some way most appropriate, for our 
everlasting study and our everlasting progress in discovery. 
The whole system of his moral purposes and providential 
decrees, his penal distributions and redeeming works, will 
be accessible to us, and all the creatures and creations of 
his power offered to our acquaintance and free inspection. 
Our present difficulties and hard questions will soon be 
solved and passed bj. Even the world itself, so difficult 
to penetrate, so clouded with mystery, will become a 
transparency to us, through which God's light will pour as 
the sun through the open sky. John knew no better way 
of describing the perfectly luminous state of the blessed 
minds than to say, — and there shall be no night there, and 
they have no candle, neither light of the sun ; for the 
Lord God giveth them light. They dwell thus in the 
eternal daylight of love and reason ; for they are so let 
into the mind of God, and the glorious mysteries of hie 
nature, that every thing is lighted up as they come to it 
even as the earth and its objects by the sun- -The Lord 
God giveth them light. 

In closing the review of such a subject as this, let us 
first of all receive a lesson of modesty, and particularly such 
as are most wont to complain of God, and boldest in theii 
judgments against him. Which way soever we turn, in 



LIGHT OS THE CLOUD 16) 

oar search after knowledge, we run against mystery at the 
second or third step. And a great part of our misery, a 
still greater of our unbelief, and all the lunatic rage of out 
skepticism, arises in the fact that we either do not, or will not 
see it to be so. Ignorance trying to comprehend what is in- 
scrutable, and out of patience, that it can not make the high 
tilings of God come down to its own petty measures, is the 
definition of all atheism. There is no true comfort in life, no 
dignity in reason, apart from modesty. ~We wrangle with 
providence and call it reason, we rush upon God's mysteries, 
and tear ourselves against the appointments of his throne, 
and then, because we bleed, complain that he cruelly mocks 
our understanding. All our disputings and hard speeches 
are the frothing of our ignorance, maddened by our pride, 
0, if we could see our own limitations, and how little it is 
possible for us to know of matters infinite, how much loss, 
clouded by the necessary blindness of a mind disordered by 
evil, we should then be in a way to learn, and the lessons 
God will teach would put us in a way to know what now 
is hidden from us. Knowledge pufTeth up, charity build- 
eth up. One makes a balloon of us, the other a temple. 
And as one, lighter than the wind, is driven loose in its 
aerial voyage, to be frozen in the airy heights of specula- 
tion, or drifted into the sea to be drowned in the waters 
of ignorance, which it risked without ability to swim, so 
the other, grounded on a rock, rises into solid majesty, 
proportionate, enduring, and strong. After all his labored 
utings and lofty reasons with his friends, Job turns 
himself to God and Bays — I know that thou canst do every 
thing, and that nothing can be withholden from thee. "Who 
is he that hideth counsel without knowledge. Therefore 
have I uttered that I understood not ; things too wonderful 

14* 



162 LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 

for me, that I knew not. There is the true point of 
modesty — he has found it at last! Whoever finds it hat? 
made a great attainment. 

How clear is it also, in this subject, that there is no place 
for complaint or repining under the sorrows and trials of 
life. There is nothing in what has befallen, or befalls you, 
my friends, which justifies impatience or peevishness. 
God is inscrutable, but not wrong. Eemember, if the 
cloud is over you, that there is a bright light always on 
the other side ; also, that the time is coming, either in this 
world or the next, when that cloud will be swept away 
and the fullness of God's light and wisdom poured around 
you. Every thing which has befallen you, whatever sor- 
row your heart bleeds with, whatever pain you suffer, even 
though it be the pains of a passion like that which Jesus 
endured at the hands of his enemies— nothing is wanting, 
but to see the light that actually exists, waiting to be re- 
vealed, and you will be satisfied. If your life is dark, then 
walk by faith, and God is pledged to keep you as safe as 
if you could understand every thing. He that dwelleth 
in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the 
shadow of the Almighty. 

These things, however, I can say, with no propriety, to 
many. No such comforts, or hopes belong to you that are 
living without God. You have nothing to expect from 
the revelations of the future. The cloud that you complain 
of will indeed be cleared away, and you will see that, in 
a 1 ! }^our afflictions, severities, and losses, God was dealing 
with you righteously and kindly. You will be satisfied 
with God and with all that he has done for you, but alas ; 
you will not be satisfied with yourself. That is more dif- 
ficult, forever impossible! And I can conceive no pang 



LIGHT OX THE CLOUD. 163 

inure dreadful than to see, as you will, the cloud lifted from 
every dealing of God that you thought to be harsh, 01 
unrighteous, and to feel that, as he is justified, you your- 
self are forever condemned. You can no more accuse 
your birth, your capacity, your education, your health, 
your friends, your enemies, your temptations. You still 
had opportunities, convictions, calls of grace, and calls of 
blessing. You are judged according to that you had, and 
not according to that you had not. Your mouth is eter- 
nally shut, and God is eternally clear. 

Finally it accords with our subject to observe that, while 
the inscrutability of God should keep us in modestv and 
our complaints against him, it should never suppress, 
but rather sharpen our desire of knowledge. For the more 
there is that is hidden, the more is to be discovered and 
known, if not to-day then to-morrow, if not to-morrow, 
when the time God sets for it is come. To know, is not 
to surmount God, as some would appear to imagine. 
Rightly viewed, all real knowledge is but the knowledge 
of God. Knowledge is the fire of adoration, adoration is 
the gate of knowledge. And when this gate of the soul 
is fully opened, as it will be when the adoring grace is 
plete in our deliverance from all impurity, what a 
slation of knowledge must follow. Having now a de- 
sire of knowledge perfected in us that is clear of all con- 
. ambition, haste, impatience, the clouds under which 
we lived in our sin are : I away, and our ador- 

ing nature, transparent to < I j a window to the sun, is 

filled with his eternal light. Xo mvsteries remain but 
such as comfort us in the ] ise of a glorious empl 
ment. The light of the moon the light of the sun, 

and the light of the sun sevenfold, and every object oi 



164 LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

knowledge, irradiated by the brightness of God, shines 
with a new celestial clearness and an inconceivable beauty 
The resurrection morning is a true sun-rising, the inburst- 
ing of a cloudless day on all the righteous dead. They 
wake transfigured, at their Master's call, with the fashion 
of their countenance altered and shining like his own. 

Creature all grandeur, son of truth and light, 
Up from the dust, the last great day is bright,— 
Bright on the Holy Mountain round the throne, 
Bright where in borrowed light the far stars shone ; 
Regions on regions far away they shine, 
'Tis light ineffable ! 'tis light divine ! 
Immortal light and life forevermore ! 

There was a cloud, and there was a time when man saw 
not the brightness that shined upon it from above. That 
cloud is lifted, and God is clear in his own essential beauty 
and glory forever. 



IX. 

THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 

Matthew xxv. 28. — i; Take, therefore, the talent from him? 

Many persons read this parable of the talents, I believe, 
very much as if it related only to gifts external to the 

3on; or, if to gifts that are personal, to such only as 
are called talents, in the lower and merely man-ward rela- 
tions and uses of life; such as the understanding, reason, 
memory, imagination, feeling, and whatever powers are 

$t concerned in discovery, management, address, and 
influence over others. But the Great Teachers meaning 
reaches higher than this, and comprehends more; viz., 
those talents, more especially, which go to exalt the sub- 
ject in his God-ward relations. The main stress of his 
doctrine hinges, I conceive, on our responsibility, as re- 

Ifl the capacity of religion itself; for this, in highest 

-•'miner :he talent, the royal gift of man. The 

city of religion, taken as the highest trust God gives ns, 

he is teaching his disciples may be livefolded, tenfol 

indefinitely increased, as all other gifts are, by a proper 

use; or it may be neglected, hid, suppressed, and, being 

3 kept back, may finally be so reduced as to be even 
extirpated. This Litter, the extirpation, or taking away 
of the holy talent, is the fearful and admonitory close to 
which the para I / rought in my text. In pursuing 

the subject pn ;, two points will naturally engage our 

attention. 



166 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

I. That the capacity for religion is a talent, the highest talent 
we have. And, — 

II. That this capacity is one that, by total disuse and the 
overgrowth of others, is finally extirpated. 

I. The capacity for religion is a talent, the highest talent 
we have. 

We mean by a talent, the capacity for doing, or becoim 
ing something ; as for learning, speaking, trade, command. 
Our talents are as numerous, therefore, and various as the 
effects we may operate. 

We have talents of the body too, and talents of the 
mind, or soul. Our talents of body are strength, endur- 
ance, grace, swiftness, beauty, and the like. Our mental 
or spiritual talents are more various, and, for the purpose 
we have now in hand, may be subdivided into such as be- 
long, in part, to the natural life, and such as belong wholly 
to the religious and spiritual. 

All those which can be used, or which come into play, 
in earthly subjects, and apart from Grod and religion, are 
natural, and those which relate immediately to Grod, and 
things unseen, as connected with God, are religious. In 
the former class, we may name intellect, judgment, reason, 
observation, abstraction, imagination, memory, feeling, af- 
fection, w T ill, conscience, and all the moral sentiments. 
These all come into the uses and act a part in the activities 
of religion, but they have uses and activities in things 
earthly, where religion is wholly apart, or may be. and 
therefore we do not class them as religious talents. An 
atheist can remember, reason, hate, and even talk of duty ; 
and therefore these several kinds of talent are not distinct 
ively religious. 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 167 

The religious talents compose the whole God-waid side 
of faculty in us. They are such especially as come 
into exercise in the matter of religious faith and experience, 
and nowhere else. They include, first, the want of God, 
which is, in fact, a receptivity for God. All wants are 
capacities of reception, and in this view are talents ac- 
cording to their measure. Low grades of being want low 
objects, but the want of man is God. And, as all great 
wants, in things inferior, such as knowledge, honor, power, 
belong only to great men, what shall we consider this 
want of Gfod to be, but the highest possible endowment. 

Nearly related to this talent of want is the talent of in- 
spiration. By this we mean a capacity to be permeated, 
illuminated, guided, exalted, by God or the Spirit of Go* I 
within, and yet so as not to be any the less completely 
ourselves. This is a high distinction, a glorious talent. 
Xo other kind of being known to us, in the works of God 
whether animate or inanimate, has the capacity to admit 
in this manner, and be visited by, the inspirations of God. 
It requires a nature gloriously akin to God in its mold, 
thus to let in his action, falling freely into chime with his 
freedom, and, in consciously self-acting power, receiving 
the impulsion of his eternal thought and character. 

We have also another religious talent, or God-ward ca- 
pacity, which may be called the spiritual sense, or the 
power of divine apprehension. Some kind of apprehen- 
sive, or perceptive power, belongs to every creature of life ; 
as we may see in the distinguishing touch of the sensitive 
plant, in the keen auditory and scenting powers of many 
quadrupeds, in our own five senses, or, rising still higher, 
»n that piereing insight of mind which distinguishes the 
intellectual and scientific verities of things.- So also there 



168 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

is given to our spiritual nature, a still higher talent, the 
spiritual sense, the power of distinguishing G ;>d and re- 
ceiving the manifestation or immediate witness of God. I 
speak not here of a speculating up to God, or an inference 
that conducts to God, but of a window that opens directly 
on him from within, lets in the immediate light or revela- 
tion of God, and makes the soul even conscious of his 
reality as of its own. 

The capacity of religious love is another and distinct 
kind of talent. Other kinds of love are merely emotional, 
or humanly social, involving no principle of life, either 
good or bad, and no particular spiritual condition. Where- 
as this love of God, and of men as related to God, is a de- 
termining force, in respect to ail character and all springs of 
action. We have it only as we have a certain talent, ot 
capacity of religious love ; the capacity, that is, to let in 
or appropriate the love of God to us. Which if we do, it 
comes, not as some rill or ripple of our human love, chang- 
ing nothing in us, but it pours in, as a tide, with mighty 
floods of joy and power, and sets the whole nature beating 
with it, as the shores give answer to the ocean roll and 
roar. Now the man acts out of love and from it. He 
chimes with all good freely ; for his love is the spirit of all 
good. His activity is rest, and a lubricating power of joy 
gladdens all the works of duty and sacrifice. 

The power of faith, also, is a religious talent, which is 
to religion what the inductive or experimental power is to 
science. It is a power of knowing God, or finding God 
by experiment. It is the power in human souls of falling 
on God, and being recumbent on him in trust, so as to 
prove him out and find the answer of his personality. 
Reason can not do it, but faith can. It knows God, or may 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 169 

reciprocally ? and finds a way into his secret will and mind 
so as to be of him, a conscious partaker of his divine 
nature and life. 

These now are the talents of religion, the highest, no- 
blest, closest to divinity, of all the powers we have. And 
yet how many never once think of them as having any 
special consequence, or even as being talents at all, just 
because, living in separation from God, they are never once 
allowed to come into use. 

If then you will see, in the plainest manner, what is 
their true place and order in the soul, you shall find them, 
first of all, at the head of all its other powers, holding 
them subordinate. They are like the capital city of an 
empire, flowing down upon all the other cities, to regulate, 
animate, and, at the same time, appropriate them all. What 
we sometimes call the intellectual powers, — observation, 
abstraction, reason, memory, imagination, — submit them- 
selves at once, when religion comes into the field, to be 
the servitors of religion. None of these faculties make 
use of the religious, but the religious use and appro- 
priate them ; in which we see, at a glance, their natural 
inferiority. 

Next, you will see that all these other talents fall into a 
stunted and partially disabled state, when they are not 
shone upon, kept in warmth, and raised in grade, by the 
talents of religion. They sometimes grow intense in their 
downward activity on mere things: witness the scientific 
activity of the French people; but this scientific intensity 
only makes the tenuity, the affectations, the sentimental- 
ities substituted for love, the mock heroics of fame substi- 
tuted for the heroics of faith, the barrenness of great 
thought, the pruriency of conceit, the more painfully evident. 

15 



170 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

No people, emptied of religion, was ever genuinely great 
in any thing. 

How manifestly too are the subjects of the religious tal- 
ents superior to those of the natural — even as the heaven is 
high above the earth. History, science, political judg- 
ments, poetry as a mere growth of nature, philosophy as 
a development of reason, belong to these. The others 
look on God, embrace the infinite in God, receive the love 
of God, experience God, let in the inspirations of God, 
discover worlds beyond the world, seize the fact of im- 
mortality, deal in salvation, aspire to ideal and divine 
perfection. 

Again/it will be seen that all the greatest things, ever done 
in the world, have been done by the instigations and holy ele- 
vations of the religious capacity. We shall never have done 
hearing, I suppose, of Eegulus and Curtius, and such like 
specimens of the Eoman virtue, great in death ; but the whole 
army of the martyrs, comprising thousands of women and 
even many small children, dying firmly in the refusal to deny 
the Lord Jesus, are a full match and more, by the legion, 
for the bravest of the Eomans. What but the mighty 
mastership of religion has ever led a people up through 
civil wars and revolutions, into a regenerated order and 
liberty ? What has planted colonies for a great history 
but religion ? The most august and most beautiful struc- 
tures of the world have been temples of religion ; crystal- 
izations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, 
the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best 
institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the 
world has seen, represents, more or less directly the fruit- 
fulness and creativeness of the religious talents. 

The real summit, therefore, of our humanity is here, as 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 171 

our blessed Lord plainly understands in his parable of the 
talents. He does not overlook other and inferior gifts, for 
God will certainly hold us responsible for all gifts ; but it 
is this, more especially, that he holds in view, when he 
says, — take therefore the talent from him. In the clause 
that follows, we are not to understand, of course, that God 
will literally pass the talent over to one who has been 
more faithful. The terms are sufficiently met, b}- under- 
standing that God will so dispense the talents, as to regu- 
larly increase the gifts of the faithful, and regularly di- 
minish, or gradually extirpate, the gifts of those who will 
not use them. We proceed then, — 

II. To show that the religious talent, or capacity, is one 
that, by total disuse and the overgrowth of others, is 
finally extirpated. 

Few men, living without God, are aware of any such 
possibility, and, still less, of the tremendous fact itself. 
That they are really reducing themselves in this manner 
to lower dimensions, shortening in their souls, making 
blank spaces of all the highest and divinest talents of their 
nature, — alas, they dream not of it ; on the contrary, they 
imagine that they are getting above religion, growing too 
competent and wise to be longer subjected to its authority, 
or incommoded by its requirements. They do not see, or 
suspect that this very fact is evidence itself of a process 
more radical and fearful, even that which Christ himself is 
teaching in the parable. Are you willing, my friends, to 
allow the discovery of this process, this dying process, 
this extirpating process, which, in your neglect of God, is 
removing, by degrees, the very talent for religion, your 
highest and most sacred endowment. 



172 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

Hear then, first of all, what is the teaching of the scrip- 
cure. That this is the precise point of the parable of the 
talents we have seen already. In close connection, also, 
Christ reiterates his favorite maxim,- — To him that hath shall 
be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away 
even that which he hath. And here, also, the very point 
of meaning is, that neglected or abused talents will be 
shortened more and more by continued neglect and abuse, 
and, at last, will be virtually taken away or exterminated. 
What is said, in the scripture, of spiritual blindness, or 
the loss of spiritual perception, will also occur to you, 
For this people's heart is waxed gross, says the Saviour, 
and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have 
they closed. What is this closing of the eye, this loss of 
sight, but the judicial extirpation of sight? Even as he 
says in another place, — He hath blinded their eyes and 
hardened their heart, that they should not see with theii 
eyes, nor understand with their heart. Hence, also, what 
is . said, derogatively, of the wisdom of the wise and the 
understanding of the prudent, — that conceit of opinion, 
falsely called philosophy, which grows up in the neglect 
of G< >d. The word of God looks on it with pity, calls it 
folly and strong delusion, as if it were a kind of disability 
that comes on the soul in the gradual loss, or extirpation 
of its highest powers. What is it but the uplifting little- 
ness of opinion, when these highest powers are taken away? 
These babblings of opinion, speculation, reason, are also 
presented in a more pathologic way, as a kind of cancer- 
ous activity in the lower functions, that will finally devour 
all the higher powers of godliness and love: — Shun pro- 
fane and vain babblings, for thev will increase unto more 
ungodliness, and their word will eat as dotb a canker. 



EXTIEPATED BY DISUSE 173 

How sadly verified is the picture, in the ever increasing 
ungodliness of the over-curious and merely speculative 
spirit; in the swelling bulk of its conceit and the re- 
duction correspondent] y, of all highest function of insight. 

Xow this general view of a necessary taking away, of 
spiritual extirpation, of which we are admonished by the 
scriptures under these various forms, is referrible, 1 con- 
ceive, to two great laws, or causes. It is due partly to the 
neglect of the higher talents of our religious nature, and 
partly to the overactivity or overgrowth of the other and 
subordinate talents. 

1. To the neglect of the talents, or capacities of religion. 
All living members, whether of body or mind, require 
use, or exercise. It is necessary to their development, and, 
without it, they even die. Thus, if one of the arms be 
kept in free use, from childhood onward, while the other 
is drawn up over the head and made rigid there, by long 
and violent detention, a feat of religious austerity which 
the idolaters of the East often practice, the free arm and 
shoulder will grow to full size, and the other will gradu- 
ally shrink and perish. So if one of the eyes were per- 
manently covered, so as never to see the light, the other 
would be likely to grow more sharp and precise in its 
power, while this is losing its capacity and becoming a 
discontinued organ, or inlet of perception. It is on the 
same principle that the fishes which inhabit the under- 
ground river of a great western cave, while, in form and 
species, they appear to correspond with others that swim 
in the surface waters of the region adjacent, have yet the 
remarkable distinction of possessing no eyes. Since there 
is no light in their underground element, the physical 
organism instinctively changes type. It will not even 

15* 



174 THE CAPACITY CF RELIGION 

go or to make eyes, when they can not be used. It there* 
fore drops them out, presenting us the strange, exceptional 
product of an eyeless race. 

So it is with all mental and spiritual organs. Not used, 
they gradually wither and die. The child, for example, 
that grows up in utter neglect and without education, or 
any thing to develop its powers, grows dull, at last, 
and brutish; and, by the time it is twenty or thirty years 
old, the powers it had appear to be very much taken away. 
The man, thus abridged in faculty, can not learn to read 
without the greatest difficulty. The hand can not be 
trained to grace, or the eye to exactness. The very con- 
science, disused, as having any relation to God, is blunted 
and stupefied. But, while we note this visible decay of 
the functions specified, let it be observed that, here, 
in the case of the child, there is no such thing as a 
complete disuse. The most uneducated man has a certain 
necessary use of his common faculties of intelligence, and 
in some low sense, keeps them in exercise. He can not 
take care of his body, can not provide for life, can not 
act his part among men, without contrivance, thought, 
plan, memory, reason, all the powers that distinguish him 
as an intelligent being. Hence these faculties never can 
be wholly exterminated by disuse, however much reduced 
in scope and quality they may be. But it is not so with 
the religious talents. In a worldly life they are almost 
absolutely disused. They are kept under, suppressed, al- 
lowed no range, or play. According to the parable, they 
are wrapped up in a napkin and hid. Eefusing to know 
God, to let your deep want receive him, to admit the holy 
permeations of his Spirit, to be flooded with his all- 
transforming love, to come into the secret discerning and 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 175 

acquaintance of liis mind, and live in the mutuality of his 
personal fellowship, you command all these higher talents 
of your soul to exist in disuse. This is the tearful, horrible 
thing in your life of sin, that you sentence all your God- 
ward powers to a state of utter nothingness, to be ears that 
must not hear, eyes that must not see. And then, what must 
finally follow, but that they can not ? How is it possible 
for any talent or gift to survive that can not be exercised? 
And this process of extirpation will be hastened, again, — 

2. By the operation of that immense overgrowth or 
overactivity which is kept up in the other powers. Thus 
it is that gardeners, when a tree is making wood too fast, 
understand that it will make no fruit ; all the juices and 
nutritive fluids being carried off in the other direction, to 
make wood. And therefore, to hasten the growth of fruit, 
they head in the branches. So when trees are growing 
rapidly upward, as in a forest, that growth calls away the 
juices from the lower and lateral branches and leaves them 
to die. A healthy limb of our body, being checked by 
some disease, the other limbs or members call off the nu- 
triment in their direction ; when it begins to wither, and, 
at last, is virtually extirpated. 

Just so it is, when a child becomes preternaturally active 
in some particular faculty, under the stimulus of success 
or much applause ; it turns out finally that the wonderful 
activity that made him a prodigy in figures, or in memory, 
unless early arrested, has sunk him to a rank as much be- 
low mediocrity in every thing else. His overgrowth in 
arithmetic, or in the memorizing powers, takes away the 
nutriment of all his other functions, and leaves him to a 
Piiserable inferiority. 

Just so it is, again, when the pursuit of money grows 



176 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

to a monster passion of the soul ; the mind dwindles, the 
affections wither, and sometimes even the nerve of hun- 
ger itself ceases to act ; leaving the wretched miser to per- 
ish by starvation, fast by his heap of gold. So if a man 
lives for the table, the organs of the mouth and chin change 
their expression, the eye grows dull, the gait heavy, the 
voice takes a coarse animalized sound, and the higher 
qualities of intelligence, he may once have manifested, will 
be manifested nowhere, save as purveyors to the organs of 
taste and the gastric energy. 

In the same way, a man who is brought up in mere 
conventionalities and taught to regard appearances as the 
only realities, loses out the sense of truth. He blushes 
at the least defect in his toilette, and lies to get away from 
an honest debt, without any trace of compunction, or 
shame for his baseness. 

And so also the child, brought up as a thief, gets an in- 
finite power of cunning and adroitness, and loses out just 
as much in the power of true perception. 

In the same way, a race of men long occupied in fero- 
cious wars grow sharp in the hearing, keen as the beasts 
of prey in pursuit, sensitively shy of death, when it can 
be avoided, and when it can not, equally stoical in regard 
to it ; but, while these talents of blood are unfolding so 
remarkably, they lose out utterly the sense of order, the 
instinct of prudence and providence, all the sweet charities, 
all the finer powers of thought, and become a savage race. 
Having lost a full half of their nature and sunk below 
the possibility of progress, we, for that reason, call them 
savages. 

By a little different process, the Christian monks were 
turned to fiends of blood, without being savages* Exer- 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 177 

cised, day and night, in a devotion that was aired by no 
outward, social duties, waiting only on the dreams and 
visions of a cloistered religion, all the gentle' humanities 
and social charities were absorbed or taken away. And 
then their very prayers would draw blood, and they would 
go out from the real presence itself, to bless the knife, oi 
kindle the fire. 

Xow just this extirpating process, which you have seen 
operating here on so large a scale, is going on continually 
in the overactive worldliness of all men that are living 
without God. An extravagant activity of some kind is 
always stimulating their inferior and merely natural facul- 
ties, and extirpating the higher talents of religion. Occu- 
pied with schemes that are only world-ward and selfish, 
there is an egregiously intense activity in that direction, 
coupled with entire inaction in all the highest perceptions 
and noblest affinities of their godlike nature. To say thai 
these latter will be finally taken away, or extirpated in 
this manner is to say nothing which permits a doubt. It 
can not be otherwise. All the laws of vital being, whether 
in body or mind, must be overturned to allow it to be 
otherwise. Xo man can live out a life of sin without 
also living out all the God- ward talent of his soul. 

Let me come a degree nearer to you now, and lay the 
question side by side with your experience. Is it wrong 
to assume that your religious sense was proportionately 
much stronger and more active in childhood than it is now? 
Thus onward, daring your minority, you felt the reality 
of God and things unseen, as 3-011 can not now, by youi 
utmost effort It is as if these worlds beyond the world 
had faded away, or quite gone out. You have a great 
deal more knowledge than you then had, — knowledge of 



178 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

books, men, business, scenes, subjects, a more practiced 
judgment, a greater force of argument; but it troubles 
you to find that these higher things are just as much fur- 
ther off and less real. It even surprises you to find that 
you are growing skeptical, without anj^, the least, effort to 
be so. Perhaps you begin, at times, to imagine that it 
must be only because of some fatal weakness in the evi- 
dences of religion. Why else should it lose its power 
over your mind, as you grow more intelligent? There is 
one very simple answer, my friends, to this inquiry, viz., 
that eyes disused gradually lose the power to see. If God 
gave you a religious talent, whereby to ally you to him- 
self, an eye to see him and catch the light of unseen worlds, 
a w r ant to long after him, and you have never used this 
higher nature at all, what wonder is it that it begins to 
wither and do its functions feebly, as a perishing member? 
If your bodily eyes had, for so long a time, been covered 
and forbidden once to see, what less could have befallen 
them ? Your very hand, held fast to your side for only 
half the time, would be a perished member. And what 
does it signify that your other faculties, or talents, have 
been growing in strength so plausibly ? What could be 
the result of this selfish and world- ward activity, but a pro- 
digious drawing off of personal life and energy in that di- 
rection ? Hence it is that you grow blind to God. Hence 
that, when you undertake to live a different life, you get on 
so poorly and your very prayers fly away into nothingness, 
finding only emptiness to embrace, and darkness to see. 

All this, my friends, which I gather out of your own 
experience, is but a version practical of Christ's own words 
— take therefore the talent from him. It is being taken 
away rapidly, and the shreds of it will very soon be all 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 179 

that is left. Your religions nature will finally become a 
virtually exterminated organ. Neither let it be imagined 
that, meaning no such thing, but really intending, at some 
future time, to turn yourself to God, no such thing will 
be allowed to befall you. It is befalling you and that is 
enough to spoil you of any such confidence. Besides, it 
was not shown in the parable that the servant who disused 
his talent threw it away. He carefully wrapped it up, and 
meant to keep it safe. But it was not safe to him. Hi? 
lord took it away, and the same thing is now befalling you. 
The purpose you have, at some future time, to use your 
talent avails nothing. It is going from you and, before 
you know it, will be utterly, irrecoverably gone. 

The thoughts that crowd upon us, standing before a 
subject like this, are practical and serious. And, — 

1. How manifestly hideous the process going on in 
human souls, under the power of sin. It is a process of 
real and fixed deformity. Who of us has not seen it even 
with his eyes ? The most beautiful natural character, in 
man or woman, changes, how certainly, its type, when 
growing old in worldlmess and the neglect of religion. 
The grace perishes, the beautiful feeling dries away, the 
angles grow hard, the sociality grows cold and formal, the 
temper irritable and peevish, and the look wears a kind 
of half expression, as if something once in it were gone 
out forever. It should be so, and so, in awful deed, it is; 
for a whole side of the nature, most noble and closest in 
affinity with God, has been taken away. On the other 
hand, it will be seen that a thoroughly religious old person 
holds the proportions of life 1 , and even grows more mellow 
and attractive as life advances. Indeed, the most beautiful 



180 the capacity of keligion 

sight on earth, is an aged saint of God, growing cheerful 
in his faith as life advances, becoming mellowed in his love ? 
and more and more visibly pervaded and brightened by 
the clear light of religion. 

This deforming process too is a halving process, with all 
that are in it. It exterminates the noblest side of faculty 
in them and all the most affluent springs of their greatness 
it forever dries away. It murders the angel in us, and 
saves the drudge or the worm. The man that is left is but 
a partial being, a worker, a schemer, a creature of passion, 
thought, will, hunger, remorse, but no divine principle, no 
kinsman of Christ, or of God. And this is the fearful 
taking away of which our blessed Lord admonishes; a 
taking away of the gems and leaving the casket, a taking 
away of the great and leaving the little, a taking away 
of the godlike and celestial and a leaving of the sinner m 
his sin. 

2. It follows, in the same manner, that there is no genu- 
ine culture, no proper education, which does not include 
religion. Much, indeed, of what is called education is 
only a power of deformity, a stimulus of overgrowth in 
the lower functions of the spirit, as a creature of intelli- 
gence, which overlooks and leaves to wither, causes to 
wither, all the metropolitan powers of a great mind and 
character. The first light of mind is God, the only genu- 
ine heat is religion, imaginative insight is kindled only by 
the fervors of holy truth, all noblest breadth and volume 
are unfolded in the regal amplitude of God's eternity and 
kingdom, all grandest energy and force in the impulsions 
of duty and the inspirations of faith. All training, sepa- 
rated from these, operates even a shortening of faculty, as 
truly a3 an increase. It is a kind of gymnastic for the 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE 181 

arm that paralyzes the spine. It diminishes the quantity 
of the subject, -where all sovereign quantity begins, and 
increases it only in some lower point, where it ends ; as if 
building the trunk of a lighthouse staunch and tall were 
enough, without preparing any light and revolving clock- 
work for the top. Hence it is that so many scholars, most 
bent dowm upon their tasks, and digging most intently into 
the supposed excellence, turn out, after all, to be so miser- 
ably diminished in all that constitutes power. Hence also 
that men of taste are so often attenuated by their refine- 
ments, and dwarfed by the overgrown accuracy and polish 
of their attainments. ISTo man is ever educated, in due 
form, save as being a man ; that is, a creature related to God, 
and having all his highest summits of capacity unfolded 
by the great thoughts, and greater sentiments, and nobler 
inspirations of religion. 

3. Let no one comfort himself in the intense activity oi 
his mind on the subject of religion. . That is one of the 
things to be dreaded. To be always thinking, debating, 
scheming, in reference to the great questions of religion, 
without using any of the talents that belong more appro- 
priately to God and the receiving of God, is just the way 
to extirpate the talents most rapidly, and so to close up 
the mind in spiritual darkness. And no man is more 
certainly dark to God than one who is alwaj-s at work upon 
his mystery, by the mere understanding. To be curious, 
to speculate much, to be dinning always in argument, 
battle-dooring always in opinions and dogmas, whether on 
the free side of rationalistic audacity, or the stiff side of 
catechetic orthodoxy, makes little difference; all such 
activitv is cancerous and destructive to the real talents of 
religion. What you do with the understanding nevej 

1(5 



182 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

reaches God. He is known only by them that receive 
him into their love, their faith, their deep want; known 
only as he is enshrined within, felt as a divine force, 
breathed in the inspirations of his secret life. The geome- 
ter might as well expect to solve his problems by the 
function of smell, as a responsible soul to find God by the 
understanding. How little does it signify then that you 
are always thoughtful on religious subjects? That, by 
itself, will only be your ruin. 

4. Make as little of the hope that the Holy Spirit will 
sometime open your closed or consciously closing faculties. 
It requires a talent, so to speak, for the Holy Spirit, to 
entertain or receive him. A rock can not receive the 
Holy Spirit. No more can a mind that has lost, or extin- 
guished, the talent for inspiration. The Holy Spirit, glori- 
ous and joyful truth, does find a way into souls that are 
steeped in spiritual lethargy, does beget anew the sense of 
holy things that appeared to be faded almost away. But, 
when the very faculty that makes his working possible is 
quite closed up, or so nearlv closed that no living recep- 
tivity is left for him to work in, when the soul has no fit 
room, or function, to receive his inspiring motions, more 
than a tree, half dead, to receive the quickening sap of the 
spring, or an ossified heart to let the life-power play its 
action, then, manifestly, nothing is to be hoped for longer 
from his quickening visitations. The soul was originally 
made to be dwelt in, actuated, filled with God, but finally 
this high talent is virtually extirpated ; when, of course, 
there is nothing to hope for longer. It may not be so with 
you, and it also may. 

5. The truth we are here bringing into view wears no 
look of promise, in regard to the future condition of bad 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 183 

men. If we talk of their final restoration, what is going 
to restore them, when the very thing we see in them, here, 
is the gradual extinction of their capabilities of religion ? 
Their want of God itself dies out, and they have no God- 
ward aspirations left. The talent of inspiration, of spirit- 
ual perception, of love, of faith, every inlet of their nature 
that was open to God, is closed and virtually extirpated. 
This is no figure of speech, that merely signifies their 
habitual obscuration, it is fact. By what then are they 
going to be restored ? Will God take them up, as they 
enter into the future life, and re-create their extirpated facul- 
ties of religion ? Will the pains of hell burn a religion 
into their lower faculties, and so restore them? 

But there is another hope, viz., that bad men will finally 
be themselves extirpated and cease ; that the life of sin 
will finally burn them quite out, or cause them literally 
and totally to perish. But the difficulty here is that no 
such tendency is visible. It is only seen that the talent 
for religion, which is the higher and diviner side of the 
bouI, is extirpated. The other parts are kept in some kind 
of activity, and are sometimes even overgrown, by the 
stimulations of worldly, or vicious impulse. If we some- 
times look on a poor, imbruted mortal, — one who walks, 
looks, speaks, not as a proper man but as the vestiges 
only of a man, — asking in ourselves what is there left 
that is worth salvation? — as if there were nothing; — 
Btill he lives and, what is more, some of his quanti- 
ties, viz., his passions and appetites and all his lowest affini- 
ties are even increased. His thoughts too run as rapid- 
ly as they ever did, only they run low ; his imaginations 
live, only they live in the stye of his passions. It is not, 
then, annihilation that we see in him. Nothing is really 



184 THE CAPACITY OF RELIGION 

annihilated but the celestial possibilities. And so it is with 
every soul that refuses God and religion. A living crea- 
ture remains, — a mind, a memory, a heart of passion, fears, 
irritability, will, — all these remain ; nothing is gone but 
the angel life that stood with them, and bound them all to 
God. What remains, remains ; and, for aught that we can 
see, must remain ; and there is the fatal, inevitable fact. 
How hopeless! God forbid that any of us may ever 
know what it means ! 

Finally, how clear it is that the earliest time in religion 
is the best time. If there be any of my hearers that have 
lived many years, and have consciously not begun to live 
unto God, they have much to think of in a subject like 
this. How well do they know that God is further off than 
he was, and their spiritual apprehensions less distinct. 
They have felt the sentence — take therefore the talent from 
him — passing upon them in its power, for many years. 
And how much further will you go in this neglect of God, 
before the extirpation begun is fatally complete. My 
friends, there is not an hour to lose. Only with the great- 
est difficulty will you be able, now, to gather up yourself 
and open youi closing gates to the entrance of God and his 
salvation. 

Here too is the peculiar blessing and the hopeful advant- 
age of youth. The talents which older men lose out, by 
their worldly practice and neglect of God, are fresh in them 
and free. Hence their common readiness to apprehend 
God and the things of religion. It is not because they are 
green, or unripe, as many think, but because they have a 
side of talent not yet eaten out by sinful practice ; because 
God is mirrored so clearly in the depths of their nature, 
and breathed so freely into the recesses of their open life. 



EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE. 185 

Hence their ready sensibility, their quiet perception, theii 
ability to feel out, in experiment, what reason can no* 
master, — God, Christ, the inspiring grace, the heavenly 
peace, eternal life. Hence, also, the fact that so great a 
share of those who believe, embrace Christ in their youth. 
And this, my young friends, is the day therefore of privi • 
lege to you. that you could see the bright eminence of 
your condition. The holy talent now is yours. In a few 
selfish years it will be shortening, and, before you know 
it, will be quite taken away. This best, highest, most 
glorious talent of your nature God is now calling you to 
save. Make, then, no delay in this first matter of life, the 
choice of God. Give him up thy talent, whole and fresh, 
to be increased by early devotion and a life-long fidelity 
in his service. Call it the dew of thy youth, understand- 
ing well that, when thy sun is fairly up, it will, like dew, 
be gone. 



X, 

UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 
John xx. 8, — " Then went in also that other disciple" 

In this slight touch or turn of history, is opened to m 
if we scan it closely, one of the most serious and fruitful 
chapters of Christian doctrine. Thus it is that men are 
ever touching unconsciously the springs of motion in each 
ether ; thus it is that one man, without thought or inten- 
tion, or even a consciousness of the fact, is ever leading 
some other after him. Little does Peter think, as he comes 
"dp where his doubting brother is looking into the sepulchre, 
and goes straight in, after his peculiar manner, that he is 
drawing in his brother apostle after him. As little does 
John think, when he loses his misgivings, and goes into 
the sepulchre after Peter, that he is following his brother. 
And just so, unawares to himself, is every man, the whole 
race through, laying hold of his fellow-man, to lead him 
where otherwise he would not go. "We overrun the bound- 
aries of our personality — we flow together. A Peter leads 
a John, a John goes after a Peter, both of them uncon- 
scious of any influence exerted or received. And thus 
our life and conduct are ever propagating themselves, by 
\x law of social contagion, throughout the circles and times 
in which we live. 

There are, then, you will perceive, two sorts of influence 
belonging to man ; that which is active or voluntary, and 
that which is unconscious ; — that which we exert puxposely 



UK'CO^SCIOUS INFLUENCE. 187 

or in the endeavor to sway another, as by teacning, by 
argument, by persuasion, by threatenings, by offers and 
promises, — and that which flows out from us, unawares to 
ourselves, the same which Peter had over John when he 
led him into the sepulchre. The importance of our efforts 
to do good, that is of our voluntary influence, and the 
sacred obligation we are under to exert ourselves in this 
way, are often and seriously insisted on. It is thus that 
Christianity has become, in the present age, a principle of 
so much greater activity than it has been for many centu- 
ries before ; and we fervently hope that it will yet become 
far more active than it now is, nor cease to multiply its 
industry, till it is seen by all mankind to embody the 
beneficence and the living energy of Christ himself. 

But there needs to be produced, at the same time, and 
partly for this object, a more thorough appreciation of the 
relative importance of that kind of influence, or beneficence 
which is insensibly exerted. The tremendous weight and 
efficacy of this, compared with the other, and the sacred 
responsibility laid apon us in regard to this, are felt in no 
such degree or proportion as they should be ; and the con- 
sequent loss we suffer in character, as well as that which 
the Church suffers in beauty and strength, is incalculable. 
The more stress, too, needs to be laid on this subject of 
insensible influence, because it is insensible ; because it is 
out of mind, and, when we seek to trace it, beyond a full 
discovery. 

If the doubt occur to any of you, in the announcement 

of this subject, whether we are properly responsible for an 

influence which we exert insensibly ; we are not, I reply, 

/ except so far as this influence flows direcxly from out y 

^ character and conduct. And this it does, even much 



183 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

"^more uniformly than our active influence. In the lattei 
we may fail of our end by a want of wisdom or skill 
in which case we are still as meritorious, in God's sight, 
as if we succeeded. So, again, we may really succeed, 
and do great good by our active endeavors, from mo- 
tives altogether base and hypocritical, in which case we 

\ are as evil, in God's sight, as if we had failed. But; the 
influences we exert unconsciously will almost never disa- 
gree with our real character. They are honest influences, 
following our character, as the shadow follows the sun. 
And, therefore, we are much more certainly responsible 
for them, and their effects on the world. They go stream- 
ing from us in all directions, though in channels that we 
do not see, poisoning or healing around the roots of society, 
and among the hidden wells of character. If good our- 
selves, they are good ; if bad, they are bad. And, since 
they reflect so exactly our character, it is impossible to 
doubt our responsibility for their effects on the w^orld. We 
must answer not only for what we do with a purpose, but 
for the influence we exert insensibly. To give you any 

* just impressions of the breadth and seriousness of such a 
reckoning I know to be impossible. No mind can trace 
it. But it will be something gained if I am able to awaken 
only a suspicion of the vast extent and power of those 
influences, which are ever flowing out unbidden upon 
society, from your life and character. 

In the prosecution of my design, let me ask of you. 
first of all, to expel the common prejudice that there can 
be nothing of consequence in unconscious influences, 
because they make no report, and fall on the world unob 
served. Histoiies and biographies make little account of 
the power men exert insensibly over each other. Thej 






UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 189 

tell how men have led armies, established empires, enacted 
laws, gained causes, sung, reasoned, and taught ; — always 
occupied in setting forth what they do with a purpose. 
But what they do without a purpose, the streams of influ- 
ence that flow out from their persons unbidden on the 
world, they can not trace or compute, and seldom even 
mention. So also the public laws make men responsible 
only for what they do with a positive purpose, and take 
no account of the mischiefs or benefits that are communi- 
cated, by their noxious or healthful example. The same 
is true in the discipline of families, churches, and schools; 
they make no account of the things we do, except we will 
them. What we do insensibly passes for nothing, because 
no human government can trace such influences with suf- 
ficient certainty to make their authors responsible. 

But you must not conclude that influences of this kind 
are insignificant, because they are unnoticed and noiseless. 
How is it in the natural world ? Behind the mere show, 
the outward noise and stir of the world, nature always con- 
ceals her hand of control, and the laws by which she rules. 
Who ever saw with the eye, for example, or heard with 
the ear, the exertions of that tremendous astronomic force, 
which every moment holds the compact of the physical 
universe together ? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere 
fire-fly spark in comparison ; but, because it glares on the 
clouds, and thunders so terribly in the ear, and rives the 
tree or the lock where it falls, many will be ready to think 
that it is a vastly more potent agent than gravity. 

The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the 
nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, 
and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the 
Christian shines, it would say, not so much because he 



190 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

will, as because he is a luminous object./ Not that the 
active influence of Christians is made of no account in the 
figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety 
in the fact that their unconscious influence is the chief in- 
fluence, and has the precedence in its power oyer the world. 
And yet, there are many who will be ready to think that 
light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is 
noiseless. An earthquake, for example, is to them a much 
more vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes 
thundering through the solid foundations of nature. It 
rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man,— 
cities, monuments, and temples, — are in a moment leveled 
to the ground, or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. 
Little do they think that the light of every morning, the 
soft, and genial, and silent light, is an agent many times 
more powerful. But let the light of the morning cease 
and return no more, let the hour of morning come, and 
bring with it no dawn : the outcries of a horror-stricken 
world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audi- 
ble. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. 
The vegetable growths turn pale and die. A chill creeps 
on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing 
earth. Colder, and yet colder, is the night. The vital 
blood, at length, of all creatures, stops congealed. Down 
o-oes the frost toward the earth's center. The heart of the 
sea is frozen ; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen 
in, under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, 
and all the fellow planets that have lost their sun, are be 
come mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness 
Such is the light, which revisits us in the silence of the 
morning. It makes no shock or scar. It would not wake 
an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE 19i 

the world, rescuing it, each, morning as a prey, from night 
and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even "the light of 
the world," and we must not think that, because he shines 
insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous object, he is 
therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those 
which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature; 
and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good 
men are as much more potent than what I have called their 
voluntary or active, as the great silent powers of nature 
are of greater consequence than her little disturbances and 
tumults. ] The law of human influence is deeper than many 
suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether. The outward 
endeavors made by good men or bad to sway others, they 
call their influence; whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, 
and, in most cases, but' a very small fraction, of the good 
or evil that flows out of their lives. Nay, I will even go 
further. How many persons do you meet, the insensible 
influence of whose manners and character is so decided as 
■ often to thwart their voluntary influence ; so that, whatever 
they attempt to do, in the way of controlling others, they 
are sure to carry the exact opposite of what they intend! 
And it will generally be found that, where men undertake 
by argument or persuasion to exert a power, in the face ot 
qualities that make them odious or detestable, or only not 
entitled to respect, their insensible influence will be too 
strong for them. The total effect of the life is then of a 
kind directly opposite to the voluntary endeavor; which, 
of course, does not add so much as a fraction to it. 

I call your attention, next, to the twofold powers of ot- 
feet and expression by which man connects with bis lellow 
man. If we distinguish man as a creature of language, 
and thus qualified to communicate himself to others, there 



i.92 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

. . . 4 

are in him two sets or kinds of language, one which is 

voluntary in the use, and one that is involuntary; that of 
speech in the literal sense, and that expression of the eye. 
the face, the look, the gait, the motion, the tone or cadence, 
which is sometimes called the natural language of the 
sentiments. This natural language, too, is greatly enlarged 
by the conduct of life, that which, in business and society, 
reveals the principles and spirit of men. Speech, or vol- 
untary language, is a door to the soul, that we may open 
or shut at will ; the other is a door that stands open ever- 
more, and reveals to others constantly and often very 
clearly, the tempers, tastes, and motives of their hearts. 
Within, as we may represent, is character, charging the 
common reservoir of influence, and through these twofold 
gates of the soul, pouring itself out on the world. Out of 
one it flows at choice, and whensoever we purpose to do 
good or evil to men. Out of the other it flows each mo- 
ment, as light from the sun, and propagates itself in all 
beholders. 

Then if we go over to others, that is, to the subjects of 
influence, we find every man endowed with two inlets of 
impression ; the ear and the understanding for the recep- 
tion of speech, and the sympathetic powers, the sensibili- 
ties or affections, for tinder to those sparks of emotion re • 
vealed by looks, tones, manners, and general conduct. 
And these sympathetic powers, though not immediately 
rational, are } r et inlets, open on all sides, to the understand- 
ing and character. They have a certain wonderful capac- 
ity to receive impressions, and catch the meaning of signs, 
and propagate in us whatsoever falls into their passive 
molds, from others. The impressions they receive do not 
come through verbal propositions, and are never received 






UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 193 

into verbal proposition, it may be, in the mind, and there- 
fore many think nothing of them. But precisely on this 
account are they the more powerful, because it is as if one 
heart were thus going directly into another, and carrying 
in its feelings with it. Beholding, as in a glass, the feel- 
ings of our neighbor, we are changed into the same image, 
by the assimilating power of sensibility and fellow-feeling. 
Many have gone so far, and not without show, at least, of 
reason, as to maintain that the look or expression, and 
even the very features of children, are often changed, by 
exclusive intercourse with nurses and attendants. Fur- 
thermore, if we carefully consider, we shall find it scarcely 
possible to doubt, that simply to look on bad and malignant 
faces, or those whose expressions have become infected by 
vice, to be with them and become familiarized to them, is 
enough permanently to affect the character of persons of 
mature age. I do not say that it must of necessity sub- 
vert their character, for the evil looked upon may never 
be loved or welcomed in practice ; but it is something to 
have these bad images in the soul, giving out their expres- 
sions there, and diffusing their odor among the thoughts, 
as long as we live. How dangerous a thing is it, for exam- 
ple, for a man to become accustomed to sights of cruelty ? 
What man, valuing the honor of his soul, would not shrink 
from yielding himself to such an influence? No more is 
it a thing of indifference tc become accustomed to look on 
the manners, and receive the bad expression of any kind 
of sin. 

The door of involuntary communication, I have said, ia 
always open. Of course we are communicating ourselves 
in this way to others, at every moment of our intercourse 
or presence with them. But how very seldom, in com- 

17 



194 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

parison, do we undertake by means of speech to influence 
others 1 Even the best Christian, one who most improves 
his opportunities to do good, attempts but seldom to sway 
another by voluntary influence, whereas he is all the while 
shining as a luminous object unawares, and communicat- 
ing of his heart to the world. 

But there is yet another view of this double line of 
communication which man has with his fellow-men, which 
is more general, and displays the import of the truth yet 
more convincingly. It is by one of these modes of com- 
munication that we are constituted members of voluntary 
society, and by the other, parts of a general mass, or mem- 
bers of involuntary society. You are all, in a certain 
view, individuals, and separate as persons from each other: 
you are also, in a certain other view, parts of a common 
body, as truly as the parts of a stone. Thus if you ask 
how it is that you and all men came, without your consent 
to exist in society, to be within its power, to be under its 
laws, the answer is, that while you are a man, }'ou are also 
a fractional element of a larger and more comprehensive 
being, called society — be it the family, the church, the 
state. In a certain department of your nature, it is open ; 
its sympathies and feelings are open. On this open side 
you all adhere together, as parts of a larger nature, in 
which there is a common circulation of want, impulse, and 
law. Being thus made common to each other unwittingly, 
you become one mass, one consolidated social body, ani- 
mated by one life. And observe how far this involuntary 
communication and sympathy between the members of a 
state or family is sovereign over their character. It always 
results in what we call the national or family spirit/ for 
there is a spirit peculiar to every state and family m the 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 195 

world. Sometimes, too, this national or family spirit takes 
a religious or an irreligious character, and appears almost 
to absorb the religious self-government of individuals. 
What was the national spirit of France, for example, at a 
certain time, but a spirit of infidelity ? What is the relig- 
ious spirit of Spain at this moment, but a spirit of bigot- 
ry, quite as wide of Christianity and destructive to char- 
acter as the spirit of falsehood ? TThat is the family spirit 
in many a house, but the spirit of gain, or pleasure, or ap- 
petite, in which every thing that is warm, dignified, genial, 
and good in religion, is visibly absent ? Sometimes you 
will almost fancy that you see the shapes of money in the 
eyes of the children. So it is that we are led on by na- 
tions, as it were, to a good or bad immortality. Far down 
in the secret foundations of life and society, there lie con- 
cealed great laws and channels of influence, which make 
the race common to each other in all the main departments 
or divisions of the social mass — laws which often escape 
our notice altogether, but which are to society as gravity 
to the general system of God's works. 

But these arc general considerations, and more fit, pel- 
haps, to give you a rational conception of the modes of 
influence and their relative power, than to verify that con- 
ception, or establish its truth. I now proceed to add, 
therefore, some miscellaneous proofs of a more particular 
nature. 

And 1 mention, first of all, the instinct of imitation in 
children. We begin our mortal experience, not with acts 
grounded in judgment or reason, or with ideas received 
through language, but by simple imitation, and, under the 
guidance of this, we lay our foundations. The child looks 
and listens, and whatsoever tcne of feeling or manner of 



L96 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

conduct is displayed around him, sinks into his plastic, 
passive soul, and becomes a mold of his being ever after. 
The very handling of the nursery is significant, and the 
petulance, the passion, the gentleness, the tranquillity in- 
dicated by it, are all reproduced in the child. His soul is 
a purely receptive nature, and that, for a considerable pe- 
riod, without choice or selection. A little further on, lie 
begins voluntarily to copy every thing he sees. Voice, 
manner, gait, every thing which the eye sees, the mimic 
instinct delights to act over. And thus we have a whole 
generation of future men, receiving from us their very 
beginnings, and the deepest impulses of their life and im- 
mortality. They watch us every moment, in the family, 
before the hearth, and at the table ; and when we are 
meaning them no good or evil, when we are conscious of 
exerting no influence over them, they are drawing from 
us impressions and molds of habit, which, if wrong, no 
heavenly discipline can wholly remove ; or, if right, no 
bad associations utterly dissipate. Now it may be doubted, 
I think, whether, in all the active influence of our lives, 
we do as much to shape the destiny of our fellow-men, as 
we do in this single article of unconscious influence over 
children. /"" 

Still further on, respect for others takes the place of 
imitation. We naturally desire the approbation or good 
opinion of others. You see the strength of this feeling in 
the article of fashion. How few persons have the nerve 
to resist a fashion ! We have fashions, too, in literature, 
and in worship, and in moral and religious doctrine, almost 
equally powerful. How many will violate the best rule? 
of society, because it is the practice of their circle ! How 
many reject Christ because of friends or acquaintance, 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 197 

who have no suspicion of the influence they exert, and 
will not have, till the last day shows them what they 
have done! Every good man has thus a power in Kb 
person, more mighty than his words and arguments, and 
which others feel when he little suspects it Every bad 
man, too, has a fund of poison in his character, \\ liicb 
is tainting those around him, when it is not in his 
thoughts to do them an injury. He is read and under- 
stood. His sensual tastes and habits, his unbelieving 
spirit, his suppressed leer at religion, have all a power, 
and take hold of the hearts of others, whether he will 
have it so or not. 

Again, how well understood is it, that the most active 
feelings and impulses of mankind are contagious. How 
quick enthusiasm of any sort is to kindle, and how rapidly 
it catches from one to another, till a nation blazes in the 
flame ! In the case of the crusades, you have an example 
where the personal enthusiasm of one man put all the 
states of Europe in motion. Fanaticism is almost equally 
contagious. Fear and superstition always infect the mind 
of the circle in which they are manifested. The spirit of 
war generally becomes an epidemic of madness, when once 
it has got possession of a few minds. The spirit of party 
is propagated in a similar manner. How any slight ope- 
ration in the market may spread, like a fire, if successful, 
till trade runs wild in a general infatuation, is well known. 
Now, in all these examples, the effect is produced, not by 
active endeavor to carry influence, but mostly by that in- 
sensible propagation which follows, when a flame of any 
kind is once kindled. 

Is it also true, you may ask, that the religious spirit 
propagates itself or tends to propagate itself in the same 

17* 



19b UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

way ? I see no reason to question that it does. Nor does 
any thing in the doctrine of spiritual influences, wher. 
rightly understood, forbid the supposition. For spiritual 
influences are never separated from the laws of thought in 
the individual, and the laws of feeling and influence in so- 
ciety. If, too, every disciple is to be an " epistle known 
and read of all men," what shall we expect, but that all 
men will be somehow affected by the reading? Or, if he 
is to be a light in the world, what shall we look for, but 
that others, seeing his good works, shall glorify God on his 
account? How often is it seen too as a fact of observation, 
that one, or a few good men. kindle 'at length a holy fire 
in the community in which they live, and become the 
leaven of a general reformation ! Such men give a more 
vivid proof in their persons of the reality of religious 
faith, than any words or arguments could yield. They are 
active; they endeavor, of coarse, to exert a good volun- 
tary influence ; but still their chief power lies in their holi- 
ness, and the sense they produce in others of their close 
relation to God. 

It now remains to exhibit the very important fact, that 
where the direct or active influence of men is supposed to 
be great, even this is due, in a principal degree, to that in- 
sensible influence by which their arguments, reproofs, and 
persuasions are secretly invigorated. It is not mere words 
which turn men ; it is the heart mounting, uncalled, into 
the expression of the features ; it is the eye illuminated by 
reason, the look beaming with goodness; it is the tone of 
the voice, that instrument of the soul, which charges qual 
ity with such amazing facility, and gives out in the soft, 
the tender, the tremulous, the firm, every shade of emo- 
tion and character. And so much is there in this, that the 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 199 

moral stature and character of the man that speaks arc 
likely to be well represented in his manner. If he is a 
btranger, his way will inspire confidence and attract good 
•will. His virtues will be seen, as it were, gathering round 
him to minister words and forms of thought, and their 
voices will be heard in the fall of his cadences. And the 
same is true of bad men, or men who have nothing in their 
character corresponding to what they attempt to do. ] f 
without heart or interest you attempt to move another, the 
involuntary man tells what you are doing, in a hundred 
ways at once. A hypocrite, endeavoring to exert a good 
influence, only tries to convey by words what the lying 
look, and the faithless affectation, or dry exaggeration of 
his manner, perpetually resists. We have it for a fashion 
to attribute great or even prodigious results to the volun- 
tary efforts and labors of men. Whatever they effect is 
commonly referred to nothing but the immediate power of 
what they do. Let us take an example, like that of Paul, 
and analyze it. Paul was a man of great fervor and en- 
thusiasm. He combined, withal, more of what is lofty and 
morally commanding in his character, than most of the 
very distinguished men of the world. Having this for his 
natural character, and his natural character exalted and 
made luminous bv christian faith, and the manifest in- 
dwelling of God, he had of course an almost superhuman 
sway over others. Doubtless he was intelligent, strong in 
argument, eloquent, active, to the utmost of his powers, 
but still he moved the world more by what he was than 
by what he did. The grandeur and spiritual splendor of 
his character were ever adding to his active efforts an ele- 
ment of silent power, which was the real and chief cause 1 
of their efficacy. lie convinced, subdued, inspired, and 



200 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

led, because of the half divine authority which appeared 
in his conduct, and his glowing spirit. He fought the 
good fight, because he kept the faitl, and tilled his pow- 
erful nature with influences drawn from higher worlds. 

And here I must conduct you to a yet higher example, 
oven that of the Son of God, the light of the world. 
Men dislike to be swayed by direct, voluntary influence. 
They are jealous of such control, and are therefore best 
approached by conduct and feeling, and the authority of 
simple worth, which seem to make no purposed onset. If 
goodness appears, they welcome its celestial smile ; if heav- 
en descends to encircle them, they yield to its sweetness ; 
if truth appears in the life, they honor it with a secret 
homage; if personal majesty and glory appear, they bow 
with reverence, and acknowledge with shame, their own 
vileness. Now it is on this side of human nature that 
Christ visits us, preparing just that kind of influence which 
the spirit of truth may wield with the most persuasive and 
subduing effect. It is the grandeur of his character which 
constitutes the chief power of his ministry, not his mir- 
acles or teachings apart from his character. Miracles were 
useful, at the time, to arrest attention, and his doctrine is 
useful at all times as~the highest revelation of truth possi- 
ble in speech ; but the greatest truth of the gospel, not 
withstanding, is Christ himself — a human body become 
the organ of the divine nature, and revealing, under the 
conditions of an earthly life, the glory of Cod! The 
Scripture writers have much to say, in this connection, of 
the image of God ; and an image, you know, is that which 
Bimply represents, not that which acts, or reasons^ or per- 
suades. Now it is this image of God which makes the 
center, the sun itself, of the gospel. The journcyings, 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 201 

teachings, miracles, and sufferings of Christ, all had theii 
use in bringing out this image, or what is the same, in 
making conspicuous the character and feelings of God, 
both toward sinners and toward sin. And here is the 
power of Christ — it is what of God's beauty, love, truth, 
and justice shines through him. It is the influence which 
rlows unconsciously and spontaneously out of Christ, as 
the friend of man, the light of the world, the glory of 
the Father, made visible. And some have gone so far as 
to conjecture that God made the human person, originally, 
with a view to its becoming the organ or vehicle, by which 
he might reveal his communicable attributes to other worlds. 
Christ, they believe, came to inhabit this organ, that he 
might execute a purpose so sublime. The human person 
is constituted, they say, to be a mirror of God; and God, 
being imaged in that mirror, as in Christ, is held up to the 
view of this and other worlds. It certainly is to the view 
of this ; and if the Divine nature can use this organ so 
effectively to express itself unto us, if it can bring itself, 
through the looks, tones, motions, and conduct of a 
human person, more close to our sympathies than 
by any other means, how can we think that an organ 
so communicative, inhabited by us, is not always breath- 
ing our spirit and transferring our image insensibly to 
others ? 

I ha^ e protracted the argument on this subject beyond 
what I could have wished, but I oan not dismiss it without 
suggesting a few thoughts necessary to its complete prac- 
tical effect. 

One very obvious and serious inference from it, and the 
6rst which I will name, is, that it is impossible to live in 



202 UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

this world, and escape responsibility. It is not they alone, 
as yon have seen, who are trying purposely to convert 01 
corrnpt others, who exert an influence ; you can not live 
without exerting influence. The doors of your soul are 
open on others, and theirs on you. You inhabit a house 
which is well nigh transparent; and what you are within, 
you are ever showing yourself to be without, by signs that 
have no ambiguous expression. If you had the seeds of a 
pestilence in your body, 3'ou would not have a more active 
contagion, than you have in your tempers, tastes, and prin- 
ciples. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is 
to exert an influence — an influence, too, compared with 
which mere language and persuasion are feeble. You say 
that you mean well ; at least, you think you mean to in- 
jure no one. Do you injure no one? Is your example 
harmless ? Is it ever on the side of God and duty ? You 
can not reasonably doubt that others are continually re- 
ceiving impressions from your character. As little can 
you doubt that you must answer for these impressions. If 
the influence you exert is unconsciously exerted, then it is 
only the most sincere, the truest expression of your char- 
acter. And for what can you be held responsible, if not 
for this ? Do not deceive yourselves in the thought that 
you are, at least, doing no injury, and are, therefore, living 
without responsibility; first make it sure that you are not 
every hour infusing moral death insensibly into your child- 
ren, wives, husbands, friends, and acquaintances. By a 
mere look or glance, not unlikely, you are conveying the 
influence that shall turn the scale of some one's immortal- 
ity. Dismiss, therefore, the thought that you are living 
without responsibility; that is impossible. Better is it 
franklj r to admit the truth; and if you will risk the 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 203 

influence of a character unsanctified by duty and religion, 
prepare to meet your reckoning manfully, and receive 
tke just recompense of reward. 

The true philosophy or method of doing good is also 
here explained. It is, first of all and principally, to be 
good — to have a character that will of itself communi- 
cate good. There must and will be active effort where 
there is goodness of principle ; but the latter we should 
hold to be the principal thing, the root and life of all. 
Whether it is a mistake more sad or more ridiculous, to 
make mere stir synonymous with doing good, we need not 
inquire ; enough, to be sure that one who has taken up such 
a notion of doing good, is for that reason a nuisance to 
the church. The Christian is called a light, not light- 
ning. /(In order to act with effect on others, he must walk 
in the Spirit, and thus become the image of goodness : he 
must be so akin to God, and so filled with His dispositions, 
that he shall seem to surround himself with a hallowed at- 
mosphere. \ It is folly to endeavor to make ourselves shine 
^ before we are luminous, j If the sun without his beams 
should talk to the planets, and argue with them till the 
final day, it would not make them shine ; there must be 
light in the sun itself, and then they will shine, of course. 
And this, my brethren, is what God intends for you all. 
It is the great idea of his gospel, and the work of his 
spirit, to make you lights in the world. His greatest joy 
is to give you character, to beautify your example, to 
exalt your principles, and make you each the depository 
of his own almighty grace. But in order to this, some- 
thing is necessary on your part — a full surrender of your 
mind to duty and to God, and a perpetual desire of this 
spiritual intimacy; having this, having a participation 



n/ 



204 unconscious influence. 

thus of the goodness of God, you will as naturally com- 
municate good as the sun communicates his beams. 

Our doctrine of unconscious and undesigning influence 
shows how it is, also, that the preaching of Christ is often 
so unfruitful, and especially in times of spiritual coldness. 
It is not because truth ceases to be truth, nor, of necessity, 
because it is preached in a less vivid manner, but because 
there are so many influences, preaching against the preacher, 
lie is one, the people are many ; his attempt to convince 
and persuade is a voluntary influence; their lives, on the 
other hand, and especially the lives of those who profess 
what is better, are so many unconscious influences, ever 
streaming forth upon the people, and back and forth be- 
tween each other. He preaches the truth, and they, with 
one consent, are preaching the truth down ; and how can 
he prevail against so many, and by a kind of influence so 
unequal? When the people of God are glowing with 
spiritual devotion to Him, and love to men, the case is dif- 
ferent ; then they are all preaching with the preacher, and 
making an atmosphere of warmth for his words to fall in ; 
great is the company of them that publish the truth, and 
proportionally great its power. Shall I say more ? Have 
you not already felt, my brethren, the application to which 
I would bring you? We do not exonerate ourselves; we 
do not claim to be nearer to God or holier than you ; but 
ah ! you know not how easy it is to make a winter about 
us, or how cold it feels ! Our endeavor is to preach the 
truth of Christ and his cross as clearly and as forcibly as 
we can. Sometimes it has a visible effect, and we are filled 
with joy ; sometimes it has no effect, and then we struggle 
on, as we must, but under great oppression. Have we 
none among you that preach against us in your lives ? If 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 205 

we show you the light of God's truth, does it never fall 
on banks of ice ; which if the light shines through, the 
crystal masses are yet as cold as before ? We do not ac- 
cuse you; that we leave to God, and to those who may 
rise up in the last day to testify against you. If they shall 
come out of your own families ; if they are the children 
that wear your names, the husband or wife of your affee 
tions ; if they declare that you, by your example, kept 
them away from Christ's truth and menyy, we may have 
accusations to meet of our own and we leave you to ac- 
quit yourselves as best you may. I only warn you, here, 
of the guilt which our Lord Jesus Christ will impute to 
them that hinder his gospel. 



XL 

OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 

Psalms cxix. 54. — " Thy statutes have been my songs m 
the house of my pilgrimaged 

When the eastern traveler takes shelter from the scorch* 
ing heat of noon, or halts for the night, in some inn or 
caravansary, which is, for the time, the house of his pil- 
grimage, he takes the sackbut or the lyre and sooths his 
rest with a song — a song it may be of war, romance, or 
love. But the poet of Israel finds his theme, we perceive, 
in the statutes of Jehovah— Thy statutes have been my 
songs in the house of my pilgrimage. These have been 
my pastime, with these I have refreshed my resting hours 
by the way, and cheered myself onward through the wea- 
risome journey and across the scorching deserts of life. 
Not songs of old tradition, not ballads of war, or wine, 
or love, have supported me, but I have sung of God's 
commandments, and these have been the solace of mv 
weary hours, the comfort of my rest. This 119th Psalm, 
which is, in every verse, an ode or hymn in praise of 
God's law, — sufficiently illustrates his meaning. 

Multitudes of men, it is evident as it need be, have a 
very different conception of this matter. Divine law, di- 
vine obligation, responsibility in any form, authority un- 
der any conditions, they feel to be a real annoyance to 
life. They want their own will and way. Why must 
they be hampered by these constant restrictions? Why 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 207 

must they be shortened in their pleasures, crippled in theii 
ambition, held back from all their strongest impulses ; 
j list those by which they might otherwise show their vigor 
and make a brave and manly figure of their life. But in- 
stead of being allowed any such generous freedom, they 
are tethered they fancy, tamed, subjected to continual 
scruples of fear and twinges of conviction, confused, weak- 
ened, let down in their confidence, and all the best com- 
fort of their life is taken away. Could they only be rid 
of this annoyance, life would be a comparatively easy and 
fair experience. 

In this controversy you have taken up with the Psalmist, 
he is very plainly right, and you as plainly wrong ; as I 
shall now undertake to show, and as you, considering that 
God's law is upon you and can by no means be escaped, 
ought most gladly to hear and discover. His doctrine, 
removing the poetry of the form, is this, — ■ 

That obligation to God is our privilege. 

Some of you will fancy, it may be, at the outset, that tho 
pilgrimage he speaks of is made by the statutes ; that the 
restrictions of obligations are so hard and close, as to cut 
off, in fact, all the true pleasures of life, and reduce it to a 
pilgrimage in its dryness. But this pilgrimage is made 
by no sense of restriction. Every man, even the most li- 
centious and reckless is a pilgrim; the atheist is a pilgrim; 
such are only a more unhappy class of pilgrims, a reluct- 
ant class who arc driven across the deserts, cheerfully trav- 
ersed by others, and by the fountains where others quench 
their thirst. There is a perfect harmony between obliga- 
tion to God and all the sources of pleasure and happiness 



208 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE 

God has provided ; so that there is no real collision between 
the statutes over us and the conditions round us. It is 
only false pleasures that are denied us, those that would 
brutalize the mind, or mar the health of the body, 01 
somehow violate the happiness of fellow beings round us. 
Consider the long run of life and take in all the interests 
of it, and you will find that what we call obligation to 
God, not only does not infringe upon your pleasures, but 
actually commands you on, to the greatest and highest 
enjoyments of which you are capable. 

There is another objection or false impression that needs 
to be noticed ; viz., that the very enforcements of penalty 
and terror added to God's law, to compel an acceptance of 
it or obedience to it, are a kind of concession that it is not 
a privilege, but a restriction or severity rather, which can 
not otherwise be carried. Is it then a fair inference, that 
human laws are severe and hard restrictions, and no true 
privilege, or blessing, because they are duly enforced by 
additions of penalty? It is only to malefactors and felons 
that they are so ; and for these only, considered as being 
enforced by terrors, they are made. They are restrictions 
to the lawless and disobedient, never to the good. On the 
contrary, a right minded, loyal people, will value their 
laws and cherish them as the safeguard even of their lib- 
erty. Just so also, the righteous man will have God's 
statutes for his songs, in all the course of his pilgrimage. 

Dismissing now these common impressions, let us go on 
to inquire a little more definitely, how it would be with us, 
if we existed under no terms of obligation ; for if we are 
to settle it fairly, whether obligation is a privilege or not, 
this manifestly is the mode in which the question should 
be stated. The true alternative between obligation and no 



OBLIGATION A FEIV1LEGE 209 

obligation supposes, on the negative side, that we are not 
even to have the sense of obligation, or of moral distinc- 
tions ; for the sense of obligation is the same thing as be- 
ing obliged, or put in responsibility. 

In such a case, our external condition must obviously 
be as different as possible from what it is now. 

In the first place, there could, of course, be no such 
thing as criminal law for the defense of property, reputa- 
tion and life; because the moral distinctions, in which 
criminal law is grounded, are all wanting. The laws 
against theft and murder, for example, suppose the fact 
that these are understood already and blamed as being 
wrongs — violations, that is, of moral obligation. And 
there is no conceivable way of defining these crimes, and 
bringing them to judgment, except by reference to notions, 
or distinctions already admitted. Murder, for example, 
can not be defined as a mere killing, or in any external 
way ; for no external sign will hold without exception, 
Hence the law is obliged to define it as a killing with mal- 
ice aforethought — to go into the heart, that is, and distin- 
guish it there, as being done with a consciously criminal 
intent. The defenses of civil society, therefore, must all 
be wanting, where there is no recognized obligation to 
God. We are so far reduced to the condition of the quad- 
ruped races. Having, as they, no moral and religious 
ideas, we can not legislate. Civil society is, in fact, im- 
possible, and all that is genial and peaceful, under the be- 
nign protection of the state, is a good no longer attainable. 
If a man r s property is plundered, he knows it only as a 
loss, not as a crime. If his children are murdered or sold 
into slavery, he may be angry as a bear robbed of ber 

18* 



210 OBLIGATION A PKIVILEGE. 

whelps, but lie lias no conception of a wrong in what 'he 
suffers. There is nothing left us in these low possibilities, 
bat to herd, as animals do, and take from each other what 
we must; to gore and tear and devour; to fly, to hide, to 
quiver with terror, the weak before the strong, and so live 
on as we best can ; for to invent a criminal law without 
even the notion of a crime, and to phrase it in language 
that any tribunal could interpret, when the idea of crime 
has not yet arrived, is manifestly impossible. 

Again, what we call society, as far as there is any element 
of dignity or blessing in it, depends on these moral obli* 
gallons. Without these it would be intercourse without 
friendship, truth, charity, or mercy. All that is warm and 
trustful and dear in society, rests in the keeping of these 
moral bonds. Extinguish moral ideas and laws and these 
lovely virtues also die ; for their life is upheld by the sense 
of duty and right. Where there is no law there is no sin, 
or guilt — as little is there any virtue. Of course there is 
nothing to praise, or confide in. Truth is not conceived. 
Friendship and love are things of convenience, determin- 
able also by convenience. Chastity, without the moral 
idea, is a name as honorable as hunger, and as worthy to 
be kept. Purity and truth are accidents. Domestic faith 
and the tender affections that ennoble and bless the homes, 
are as reliable as the other caprices of unregulated impulse 
and passion. Without moral obligations, therefore, bind- 
ing us to God, society is discontinued. Nothing that de- 
serves the name is possible. Life, in fact, is wrong with- 
out a sense of wrong; society a proximity of distrust and 
fear, and the passions, unrestrained by duty, a hell of gen- 
eral torment, without any sense of blame to explain it. 

But these are matters external to which I refer, just to 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 211 

call up some faint conception- of the immense revolution 
it makes in our human existence, only to remove this one 
element of obligation. Let us enter now the spiritual na- 
ture itself, and see how much is there depending on this 
great privilege of obligation to God. 

This claim of God's authority, this bond of duty laid 
upon us, is virtually the throne of God erected in the 
bouL It is sovereign, of course, unaccommodating there- 
fore, and may be felt as a sore annoyance. "When violated, 
it will scorch the bosom even, with pangs of remorse that 
are the most fiery and implacable of all mental suffer- 
ings. But of this, there is no need ; all such pains are 
avoidable by due obedience. And then obligation to God 
becomes the spring instead, of the most dignified, fullest, 
healthiest joys any where attainable. The self-approving 
consciousness, the consciousness of good — what can raise 
one to a loftier pitch of confidence and blessing. It is 
with these obligations to God, just as it is with the physical 
laws. These latter, violated by neglect, excess, or obsti- 
nacy, are our most relentless enemies and persecutors ; re- 
spected and deferred to, they become our most faithful 
friends and helpers. Did any one ever judge, on this ac- 
count, that they are only hindrances and restraints on out 
happiness which were better to be discontinued ? Loosen 
then the grand attractions, and let the huge bulks of heav- 
en fly as they will. Make the stones soluble, at times, and 
the waters combustible, without any change of conditions ; 
let congelation be sometimes b} fire, and liquefaction by 
frost ; let the water -fall sometimes mount upward into the 
air, and the smoke plunge downward on the ground. Abol- 
ish all the stable restrictions of law, and let nature loose. 



212 OBLIGATION A PKIYILKGE. 

to go such, way, or after such gait, as she pleases ; and, by 
that time, we shall find that her uses are gone, and that all 
oar magnificent liberty in them is taken away. The pow- 
ers, which before consented to serve us, have become our 
enemies, and we are lost in a hell of physical anarchy that 
suffers none of the uses of life. Just so it would be, if we 
could exterminate and strip out of our way these con- 
straints of obligation to Grod. We should find that even 
the release we covet is, in fact, the bitterest and sorest frus- 
tration of our desired liberty. 

Thus how much, for example, does it signify, as regards 
your comfort, that this one matter, a matter so profoundly 
central too, in your experiences and views of life, is fixed. 
Opinions, sentiments, hopes, fears, popularities, and to 
these also you may add all the honors and gifts of fortune, 
are in a fluxile, shifting state. There is no fixed element 
in any one of them. You live in them as you do in the 
weather. Even the courses of your mind, and the shifting 
phases you pass are a kind of internal weather that never 
settles, or becomes fixed. But in the sacred fact of obli- 
gation you touch the immutable and lay hold, as it were, 
of the eternities. At the very center of your being, there 
is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially 
sovereign. And in that fact every thing pertaining to 
your existence is changed. You are no more afloat or 
a-sea, in the endless phases and variabilities just referred to, 
but a very large class of your judgments and views of life 
and acknowledged principles are immovably settled. A 
standard is set up in your thought, by which a great part 
of your questions are determined, and about which your 
otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. 
Few men ever conceive what they owe to obligation here, 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE, 213 

as the mere bond of order and mental conservation 
Doubtless obligation violated, is the minister of pain, but 
to be without obligation, is a pain more bitter and distract- 
ing; for it is much to know that you have a compass in 
the ship, even if you do not use it. Sent forth into life to 
choose every thing by mere interest and will, to be played 
with alwavs bv vour passions and vour fancies, and to 
frame your judgments apart from any fixed point or stand- 
ard of judgment, l'fe would soon become a distressful 
puzzle to you, which you could not bear. You would 
make and unmake, till vou lost all stabilitv and all con- 
fidence in your own thoughts. Your confusion itself 
would be insupportable. You would even go mad in the 
struggle; you would cry aloud and lift your dismal prayer 
to accident, in fault of any other divinity, for something 
fixed. Give me fate, give me something established, 
though it be a continent of fire ! I can not live in these 
bottomless san 

How good and sublime a gift, in this view, is the gift of 
. It comes down smiling from the skies and enters 
into souls, as the beginning and throne of wisdom. Or using: 
a different figure, we may say that man comes into being 
bringing his law with him ; a law as definite and stable as 
that of the firmament : one that shall go with him, when 
consentingly accepted, and mark out the path of his pil- 
grimage binding all his otherwise random exercises of 
ire, fancy and free will, to an orbit of goodness and 
truth. Everv tiling within him now is under a deter- 
minating rule. His soul is held in a harmonious balance 
of powers, like the heavenly worlds. Beason, feeling, pa-:- 
. fancy, all work in together under the great conserv- 
ing law of obligation to God, and the soul is kept in re- 



214 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 

collection, as a self -understanding nature. Who can think 
of man, wedded in this manner to the stability and eter- 
nity of God, without uniting a sense even of grandeur and 
sublimity with the bond of obligation by which he is thus 
set fast and centralized in the immutable. 

Consider, again, the truly fraternal relation between our 
obligations to God and what we call our liberty. Instead 
of restraining our liberty, they only show us, in fact, how 
to use our liberty, and how to air it, if I may so speak, in 
great and heroic actions. How insipid and foolish a thing 
were life if there were nothing laid upon us to do. What 
is it, on the other hand, but the zest and glory of life, that 
something good and great, something really worthy to be 
done is laid upon us. It is not self-indulgence allowed, 
but victory achieved, that can make a fit happiness for 
man. Therefore we are set down here amid changes, perils, 
wrongs and miseries, where, to save ourselves and serve 
our kind, all manner of great works are to be done. Be- 
sides, we practically admit the arrangement much often er 
than we think. Tell any young man, for example, who 
is just converted to Christ, of some great sacrifice he is 
called to make ; as in preaching Christ to men, or going to 
preach him to the heathen ; and that call, set forth as a 
sacrifice of all things, will work upon him more power- 
fully, by a hundred times, than it would if you undertook 
to soften it by showing what respect he would gain, how 
comfortable he would be, and how much easier in this than 
in any other calling of life. We do not want any such 
caresses in the name of duty. To let go self-indulgence 
and try something stronger, is a call that draws us always, 
when our heart is up for duty ; nay, even nature loves 
heroic impulse and oftentimes prefers the difficult. 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 215 

It is well, therefore, — all the better that we are put upon 
the doing of what is not always agreeable to the llesh. 
And when God lavs upon us the duties of self-command 
and self-sacrifice, when he calls us to act and to suffer he- 
roically, how could he more effectually dignify or ennoble 
our liberty? Xow we have our object and our errand, and 
we know that we can meet our losses, come as they will 
Before every man and in all his duties there is something 
like a victory to be gained and he can say, as the soldier of 
duty ; — Strike me, my enemy ; beat upon me, O thou hail ! 
Mine it is to fulfill God's statutes, and therein I make you 
my servants. 

Obligation to God also, imparts zest to life, by giving to 
our actions a higher import and, when they are right, a 
more consciously elevated spirit. The most serene, the 
most truly godlike enjoyment open to man, is that which 
he receives in the testimony that he pleases God and the 
moral self-approbation of his own mind. When he re- 
gards his life as having a moral quality, over and above 
what may be called its secular and economic import ; as 
having to do with the holy and true and good, and as be- 
ing, in tbat highest view, a worthy and upright life; then 
he feels a joy which, if it be human, partakes also of the 
divine. It is a kind of joy too that connects in his mind 
with thoughts of his own personal perfection, and this 
makes it even a sublime thing to live. In the mere pru- 
dential life of man as an earthly creature, in his cares, do- 
ings, plans and pleasures, there is no respect to any results 
of quality in the person, but only to what he may get, or 
Buffer, or be, in this life. The idea of personal perfection 
enters only with that of obligation to God. There dawns 
the thought of a divine quality — the moral, the good, the 



216 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 

holy ; and his soul rises out of a life in the dust, to look 
about for those angelic prospects, which are suited to the 
perfect glory of a perfect mind. Now, too, enters the great 
thought of eternity. Obligation is a word that opens 
eternity; for the idea itself is immutable, and therefore, it 
must needs suggest and prove an immutable state. Now 
you become to yourself quite another and different crea- 
ture, a denizen of eternity. Breathing, digestion, growth, 
a fine show and a titled name, — none of these have much 
to do with the real import of life. You are living on the 
verge of great perils, meditating perfection after the style 
of God, and in your every thought of dutj^ coupling the 
thought also of immutable good and glory. If you are a 
politician, a tradesman, a man of toil, or of letters, you are 
yet in none of these a mere life-time creature, but, in all, 
you are doing battle for eternity, and receiving the disci- 
pline of an angel. Ennobled by such a thought, how is 
the soul armed against evil, made superior to passion ; and 
assisted to act a worthy part in life's scenes. Now you 
find a power in the very sublimity of your trial. You 
surmount your narrow infirmities, you exercise yourself 
easily in great virtues, you rise into a lofty and glorious 
serenity of spirit, all because the inspiring presence of 
eternity fills your life. 

In this article of obligation to God, you are set also in 
immediate relation to God himself; and, in a relation so 
high, every thing in you and about you changes its im- 
port. The world is no more a mere physical frame — it 
exists rather as a theatre of religion. God is in it, every 
where, training his creature unto himself. He is clearly 
seen by the things that are made. The objects of science 
take a moral import. Human history becomes Divine his- 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 217 

tcry, the history of Providence. The soul's King is here 
on every side looking in upon it, encouraging to duty, 
and smiling upon what is rightly done. The intellect 
pierces through the shell of the senses, and discerns 
everywhere God. The reason is encircled by mysteries 
vast and holy. Imagination soars into her own appro- 
priate realm of spirit and divinity, and all the faculties 
we have, are bathed in joy, and transfigured in the 
Creator's light. Set thus in a personal relation to God, 
every thing changes its aspect and its meaning, 

How different thus, one from the other, is the world of 
Voltaire, and the world of Milton. They look, if you 
please, upon the same sun and consider the light together. 
They walk the same shore of the same ocean, they medi- 
tate of its vastness and listen to the chorus of its waters. 
They feel the gentleness of the dew, and the majesty of 
the storm. They ask what is the meaning of man's his- 
tory, what is birth, life, death ; but how different all, are 
the things they look upon and the thoughts they cherish. 
One discovers only the clay world and its material beauties, 
flashes into shallow brilliancy and, weaving a song of sur- 
faces, empties himself of all that he has felt or seen. But 
the other, back of all and through all visible things, has 
seen spirit and divinity. God is there, giving out himself 
to his children, and all the furniture of life, its objects, 
scenes and relations, take a religious meaning. A radiant 
glow and warmth pervade the world. The meanings are 
inexhaustible. Nothing is wearisome or dull, or mean ; 
for nothing can be that is dignified by God's presence and 
ordered by his care to serve a religious use. 

It is also a great fact, as regards a due impression of 

obligation to God, and of what is conferred in it that it 

19 



218 OBLIGATION A PKHILEGE. 

raises and tones the spiritual emotions of obedient souls 
into a key of sublimity, which is the completeness of their 
joy. For ye are complete in him, says our apostle, well 
knowing that it is not what we are in ourselves that makes 
our completeness, but that our measure of being is full^ 
only when we come unto God as an object and unite our« 
selves to the good and great emotions of God. This brings 
all high affinities and affections into play; for, without 
God, as an object for the soul to admire, love, and worship, 
it were only an incomplete nature, an instrument of music 
without a medium of so and. True, the cowardly spirit of 
guilt finds no such happiness in being related to God, and 
would even shun the thought of any such relation. There- 
fore some will even argue against religious obligation, be- 
cause it introduces fear, and fear, they say, is a base and 
uncomfortable passion. Eather say that the guilt is base, 
by which God is offended, and confidence changed to fear. 
Neither forget that one thing is baser for the guilty even 
than fear, and that is not to fear. Besides, it is a part of 
the blessing and greatness of obligation that life is thus 
made critical, and that obedience is thus intensified in its 
joy, by great and fearful emotions. The more critical, 
therefore, life is, without shaking our courage, the closer 
are we to sublimity of feeling ; for in all sublimity there 
is an element of fear. And so the greatness of God, the 
infinitude of his nature, the majesty of his word and will 
the purity, justice, and severe perfection of his character,— 
all these bring a sense of fear to the mind, and, precisely 
on this account, God, as an object, will raise every good 
mind to a perpetual sublimity of feeling, and in that man- 
ner fill out the measure of its possible joy ; for joy is neveT 
full, save when the soul quivers with awe, and the beati- 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 219 

tnde itself rises to a pitch of fearfulness. And thus it is 
that obligation to God is precisely that which is needed to 
make our good complete ; for this only sets our mind be- 
fore an object that can sufficiently move it. Before Him, 
all the deep and powerful emotions that lie in the vicinity 
of fear are waked into life; every ccrd of feeling is pitched 
to its highest key or capacity, and the soul quivers eternally 
in the sacred awe of God and his commandments ; thrilled 
as by the sound of many waters, or the roll of some anthem 
that stirs the framework of the worlds. 

On this subject, too, experimental proofs may be cited, 
such as ought to leave no doubt and even no defect of im- 
pression. Would that I could refer you each to his own 
experience ; which I can not, because, by the supposition, 
I am speaking to those that have had no such experience. 
And yet there have been many who, without any specially 
religious habit, have discovered still this truth, in its regu- 
lative and otherwise beneficent influence on their life. A 
few years before his death, the great statesman of New 
England, having a large party of friends dining with him 
at Marshfield, was called on by one of the party, as they 
became seated at the table, to specify what one thing he 
had met with in his life which had done most for him, or 
contributed most effectually to the success of his personal 
history. After a moment, he replied, — "The most fruitful 
and elevating influence I have ever seemed to meet has 
been my impression of obligation, to God." Precisely in 
what manner the benefit was supposed to accrue I am not 
informed; probably, however, as an influence that raised 
the pitch of his mind, gave balance and clearness to his 
judgments, and set him on a moral footing in his ideas 
and principles, such as certified his consciousness as a 



220 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 

speaker, and added insight and energy to bis words. 
Whatever may have been the particular benefits of which 
he spoke, the scene, as described by one present, was one 
most impressive in its dignity. He dropped the knife, as 
if turned to some better hospitality, and went on for many 
minutes in a discourse on his theme, unfolding it with 
wonderful beauty and freshness. The guests were taken 
by surprise, and sat listening with intense wonder at the 
exposition he was making, and still more at the subdued, 
yet lifted, manner, by which his feeling was attested, — 
agreeing generally, as they fell into little groups afterward, 
that he probably never spoke with a finer eloquence. 

But there are higher and holier witnesses and a great 
cloud of them, whose testimony ought to be more convinc- 
ing. Thus, if you will but open the word of God's truth 
and listen to the son^s that break out there, under God's 
statutes ; if you will behold the good of past ages bending 
over God's law, as the spring of their sweetest enjoy- 
ments, crying each, — 0, how love I thy law; if you will 
observe, too, what enlargement and freedom of soul they 
find in their obedience, and how they look upon the mere 
natural life of the flesh as bondage in comparison ; if 
you t^ ill see how they disarm all their trials and dangers 
by this same obedience ; how they come away to God from 
the scorching sands of their pilgrimage, as to the shadow 
of a great rock, and refresh their fainting spirits by sing- 
ing the statutes of the Lord ; if you will see what a char- 
acter of courage, and patience, and self-sacrifice they 
receive ; how all great sentiments, such as carry their own 
dignity and blessing with them, spring up in the rugged, 
trials of duty and obedience to God ; then, last of all, if you 
will dare to break ovei the confines of mortality ascendiDg 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 221 

to look on, as spectator, in that world of the glorified, 
where the law cf God makes full illustration of its import 
in the high experiences it nourishes and the benign society 
it organizes, you will by that time get, I am sure, aw 
impression of the bliss, and greatness, and glory of obli- 
gation to God, such as will profoundly instruct you. What 
seems to you now to be a most unwelcome constraint, oi 
even an annoyance to your peace, you will thus find 
reason, after all, to believe is only the best and dearest 
privilege vouchsafed you. 

Arresting mv argument here, to what, in conclusion. 

CD ^ CD 1 I / 

shall I more fitly draw you than to that which is, in truth, 
the point established, viz., the fact that it is only religion, 
the srreat bond of love and dutv to God, that makes out 
existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live 
were onlv to graze. TTe could not guess why we exist, or 
care to exist longer. If responsibility to God is felt as a 
constraint, if it makes you uneasy and restive, better this 
than to find no real import in any thing. If you chafe, it 
is still against the throne of order, and there is some sense 
of meaning in that. If God's will is heavy on you, the 
protection it extends is not. If the circle of your motion 
is restricted, it is only that the goodness of Jehovah is 
drawing itself more closely round you. If you tremble, 
it is not because of the cold. If still you sigh over the 
emptiness of your experience, it might be even more 
empty ; for you do, at least, know that every thing in life 
is now become great and momentous. Ycu can not make 
it seem either futile or insignificant. If vou are only a 
transgressor, still the liveliest thoughts and the most thrill- 
ing truths that ei er visit your mind are such as come from 

19* 



222 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE. 

the throne of duty. Eeligion ! religion ! — it is the light 
of the world, the sun of its warmth, the zest of all its 
works. Without this the beauties of the world are but 
splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, 
and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of exist- 
ence profitless and unadulterated miseries. 

How convincing, how appalling a proof then is it, of some 
dire disorder and depravation in mankind, that when obli- 
gation to God is the spring of all that is dearest, noblest 
in thought, and most exhalted in experience, we are yet 
compelled to urge it on them by so many entreaties, and 
even to force it on their fears by God's threatened penal- 
ties. What does it mean, this strange, suicidal aversion to 
God's statutes; that which ought to be our song, endurable 
only as we are held to it by terrors and penalties of fire ? 
ISTay, worse, if possible, you shall even hear, not seldom, 
the men that say they love God's statutes, and who there- 
fore ought to be singing on their way, complaining of their 
dearth and dryness, and the necessary vanity of their ex- 
perience. Let these latter see that the vanity they com- 
plain of is the cheat of their own self-devotion, and the 
littleness of their own empty heart. Let them pray God 
to enlarge their heart, and then they will run the waj T of 
God's commandments with true lightness and freedom. 
All this moping ends when the fire of duty kindles. As 
to the other and larger class, who are living, confessedly, 
in no terms of obligation to God, let them see, first of all, 
what they gain b v it ; how the load of life's burden chafe* 5 
them; how they are crushed, crippled,* wearied, confound- 
ed, when they try to get their songs out of this world and the 
dust itself of their pilgrimage ; then go to God, and set 
their life on the footing of religion, or duty to God ; 



OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE 223 

which if they do, it shall be all gladness and peace ; for 
the rhythm of all God's works and worlds chimes with 
his eternal law of duty. 

Nothing is more certain or clear, than that human souls 
are made for law, and so for the abode of God. Without 
law therefore, without God, they must even freeze and die. 
Hence, even Christ himself, must needs establish and 
sanctify the law ; for the deliverance and liberty he comes 
to bring are still to be sought only in obedience. Hence- 
forth duty is the brother of liberty, and both rejoice in the 
common motherhood of law. And just here, my friends, 
is the secret of a great part of your misery and of the 
darkness that envelops your life. Without obligation 
you have no light, save what little may prick through 
your eyelids. Only he that keeps God's commandments 
walks in the light. The moment you can make a very 
simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privi- 
lege and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will 
teach you many things, — that duty is liberty, that repent- 
ance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that 
humility is dignity, that the truth from which you hide is 
a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that 
even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only 
of protection to his realm. 

Such and no other is the glad ministry of religion. Say 
not, when we come to jou tendering its gifts, as we do to- 
day, that jou are not ready, that you are not sufficiently 
racked by T remorse and guilty conviction, that you have 
spent, as yet, no sorrowing days or sleepless nights, — what 
can these do for you ? God wants none of these ; he only 
wants j'ou to accept him as your privilege. When he calk 
you to repentance and new obedience, this is what be 



224 OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE 

means ; that you quit jour madness, cease to gore your- 
self by your sins, come to your right mind, and accept, as 
a privilege, his good, eternal law. Giving Ihus your life 
to duty, let it, from this time forth, suffuse alike your trials 
and enjoyments with its own pure gladness, and let the 
self-approving dignity and greatness of a right mind be 
gilded — visibly and consciously gilded — by the smile 
of God. And, as the good and great society of the 
blessed is to be settled in this glorious harmony of law. 
and the statutes of the Lord are to be the song of their 
consolidated joy and rest, sing them also here; and, in all 
life's changes, in the dark days and the bright, in sorrow 
and patience and wrong, in successes and hopes and con- 
summated labors, — everywhere adhere to this, and have it 
as the strength of your days, that your obligations to God 
are the best and highest privilege he gives you. 



XII. 

HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

John" xv, 11. — " Tliese things have I spoken unto you, that 
my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." 

Cheist enters the world, bringing joy; — Grood tidings 
of great joy, cry the angels, which shall be to all people. 
So now he leaves it, bestowing his gospel as a gift of joy, — 
These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might 
remain in you and that your joy might be full. This test- 
ament of his joy he also renews in his parting prayer. 
And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the 
world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 
"Man of sorrows" though we call him, still he counts 
himself the man of joy. 

Would that I could bring you into his meaning, when 
he thus speaks, and assist you to realize the unspeakable 
import which it has to him. It is an impression deeply 
rooted in the minds of men that the christian life is a life 
of constraint, hardship, loss, penance, and comparative 
suffering ; Christ, you perceive, has no such conception of 
it, and no such conception is true. Contrary, to this, I 
shall undertake to show tliat it is a life of true joy, the pro 
foundest and only real joy attainable, — not a merely future joy, 
to be received hereafter, as the reward of a painful and sad life 
here, but a present, living, and completely full joy, unfolded in 
the soul of every man whose fidelity and constancy permit him 
to receive it. 



/ 



226 HAPPINESS AND JOY 

To clear this truth and show it forth, in the proper light 
of evidence, it is necessary, first of all, to exhibit a mis- 
take which clouds the judgments, almost or quite univers- 
ally, of those who are not in the secret of the christian joy, 
as revealed to a religious experienco. It is the mistake of 
not distinguishing between happiness and joy, or of sup- 
posing them to be really one and the same thing. It i? 
the mistake, indeed, not merely of their judgment, but of 
their practice ; for they all go after happiness without so 
much as a thought, more commonly, of any thing higher 
or better. Happiness, they assume, and in their practice 
say, is the real joy of existence, beyond which and differ- 
ent from which there is, in kind, no other. 

Now there is even a distinction of kind between the two, 
a distinction beautifully represented in the words them- 
selves. Thus happiness, according to the original use of 
the term, is that which happens, or comes to one by a hap, 
that is, by an outward befalling, or favorable condition. 
Some good is conceived, out of the soul, which comes to it 
as a happy visitation, stirring in the receiver a pleasant 
excitement. It is what money yields, or will buy ; dress, 
equipage, fashion, luxuries of the table ; or it is settlement 
in life, independence, love, applause, admiration, honor, 
glory, or the more conventional and public benefits of 
rank, political standing, victory, power. All these sin a 
delight in the soul, which is not of the soul, or its quality, 
but from without. Hence they are looked upon as hap- 
pening to the soul and, in that sense, create happiness. 
We have another word from the Latins, which very nearly 
corresponds with this from the Saxons; viz., fortune. For, 
whatever befell the soul, or came to it bringing it pleasure, 
was considered to be its good chance, and was called for- 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 227 

tunate. I suppose, indeed, that there is no language in the 
world that does not contain this idea, just because all man- 
kind are after benefits that will stir pleasure in the soul> 
without regard to its quality; after happiness, after 
fortune. 

But joy differs from this, as being of the soul itself, 
originating in its quality. And this appears in the original 
form of the word; which, instead of suggesting a hap, 
literally denotes a leap, or spring. Here again also the Latins 
had exult, which literally means a leaping forth. The radi- 
cal idea then of joy is this; that the soul is in such ordei 
and beautiful harmony, has such springs of life opened in 
its own blessed virtues, that it pours forth a sovereign joy 
from within. The motion is outward and not toward, as we 
conceive it to be in happiness. It is not the bliss of con- 
dition, but of character. There is, in this, a well-spring 
of triumphant, sovereign good, and the soul is able thus to 
pour out rivers of jo} 7 into the deserts of outward experi- 
ence. It has a light in its own luminous center, where 
God is, that gilds the darkest nights of external adversity, 
a music charming all the stormy discords of outward injury 
and pain into beats of rhythm, and melodies of peace. 

I ought, perhaps, to say that the original distinction be- 
tween these two words, thus sharply defined, is not always 
regarded ; I have traced the distinction only for the con- 
venience of my present subject, and not because the words 
are always used, or must be, in this manner. In their 
secondary uses, words are often applied more loose ly, and 
so it has fallen out with these, which are used, by the 
common class of writers indiscriminately, one for the other 
Still it will be seen that one of our English poets, Mr. Cole- 
ridge, distinguished always for the exactness of his Ian- 



228 HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

guage, uses them both, in immediate connection, so as to 
preserve their exact distinction, without any apparent de- 
sign to do so, or consciousness of the fact. Addressing a 
noble Christian lady, he gives his conception of joy, as an 
all -transforming, all -victorious power, in virtuous souls, 
in terms like these : — 

" O, pure of heart, thou needst not ask of me, 

What this strong music in the soul may be, — 

What and wherein it doth exist, 

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, 

This beautiful and beauty-making power. 

Joy, virtuous lady, joy that ne'er was given, 

Save to the pure and in their purest hour, 

Life and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, 

Joy, lady, is the spirit and the power 

That wedding nature to us gives in dower 

A new earth and new heaven, — 
********** 

We in ourselves rejoice." 

Immediately after, without any thought of drawing the 
contrast, he speaks of his own folly, with regret, because 
he was caught by the temptations of fortune and now en- 
dures the bitter penalty. 

" Fancy made me dreams of happiness; 
For hope grew round me like the twining vine, 
And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.'' 1 

The picture he draws for himself is the picture, alas ! of 
the general folly of mankind. Their " fancy makes them 
dreams of happiness , " promising to bless them in what 
may be gathered " round " them in " fruits and foliage not 
their own ; " that is, not of themselves but external. All 
good, they fancy, is in condition, not in character. They 
think of happiness, go after happiness, and have, alas, 
how generally, no thought of joy. 



HAPPINESS AND JOY 229 

And yet we have many and various symbols of joy 
about us, from which' we might well enough take the hint, 
a3 it would seem, of some possible felicity that is freer and 
higher in quality than the mere pleasures of fortune, ot 
condition. The sportive children, too full of physical life 
to be able even to restrain their activity ; the birds of the 
morning pouring out their music simply because it is in 
them, ought to suggest the possibility of some free, manly 
joy that is nobler than happiness. Precisely this too we 
have been permitted, thank God, to look upon, in the 
examples of goodness, and to hear in the report of history ; 
for history is holding up her holy examples ever before us, 
showing us the saints of Grod singing out their joy together 
in caves and dens of the earth at dead of night, showing 
too the souls of her martyrs issuing, with a shout, from the 
fires that crisp their bodies. 

Again, it is necessary, in order to a right conception of 
the meaning of christian joy, as now defined, that we dis- 
cover how to dispose of certain facts, or incidents, which 
commonly produce a contrary impression. 

Thus, when the Saviour bequeaths his joy to us, and 
prays to have it fulfilled in us, it will naturally be remem- 
bered that he lives a persecuted and abused life, that he 
passes through an agony to his death, and dies in a man- 
ner most of all ignominious and afflictive. Where then is 
the joy of which he speaks, or which he prays to have be- 
stowed upon us? Are burdens, toi]s, sorrows, persecu- 
tions, crucifixions joys? 

To this I answer that they may, in one view, be such, 
and in his case actually were. He was a truly afflicted 
being, a man of sorrows in the matter of happiness; that 
is, in the outward condition, or befalling of his earthly 

20 



230 HAPPINESS AID JOY. 

state,* still he had ever within a joy, a center of rest, a 
consciousness of purity and harmony, a spring of good, aa 
internal fullness which was perfectly sufficient. And, in- 
deed, we may call it one of the highest points of sublimity 
in his life, that he reveals the essentially victorious powei 
of joy in the divine nature itself; for God, in the contra- 
diction of sinners, in the wrongs, disorders, ungrateful re- 
turns, and disgusting miseries of his sinful subjects, suffers 
a degree of abhorrence and pain that may properly be 
called so much of unhappiness ; and he would even be an 
unhappy being were it not that the love, and patience, and 
redeeming tenderness he pours into their bosom, are to 
him a welling up eternally of conscious joy ; — joy the more 
sublime, because of its inherent and victorious excellence. 
And exactly so he represents himself, in the incarnate per- 
son of Christ. In his parable of the shepherd, calling in 
his neighbors to rejoice with him over the sheep he has 
found, he opens the secret consciousness of joy he feels 
himself, as being that shepherd. His manner too was 
sometimes that of exultation even, as when the evangelist, 
noticing his deep inward joy of heart, says, — In that hour 
Jesus rejoiced in spirit. And then, how much does it sig- 
nify, when coming to the close of his career, and just about 
to finish it by a suffering death, he says, glancing back- 
ward in thought over all he has experienced, — "My joy" — 
bequeathing it to his disciples, as the dearest legacy he can 
give, the best, last wish he is able to express! What then 
does it signify of real privation, or loss, to become his 
follower ! 

But it requires, you will say, the admission of serious 
and indeed of painful thought in us to begin such a life, 
the solemn review of our character, the discovery oi our 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 233 

sin, the sense of our shame and bondage, and our miserably 
lost condition under it ; sorrow, repentance, self-renuncia- 
tion, the loss of all things. The whole prospect, in short, 
which is opened, in coming to Christ, is painfully forbid- 
ding. The gospel even requires of us, in so many words 
tc cm off right hands, and pluck out right eyes, and deny 
and crucify ourselres, and be poor in spirit, and pass 
through life under a cross. Where then is the place 
for joy? how can the christian life be called a life o/ 

joy? 

It is not, I answer, in these things, taken simply by 
themselves. But receive an illustration : consider, a mo- 
ment, what labors, cares, self-denials, restrictions of free- 
dom, limitations of present pleasure, all men have to suffer 
in the way of what is called success ; what application the 
scholar must undergo to win the distinctions of genius, 
what dangers and privations the hero must encounter to 
command the honors of victory. Are all these made un- 
happy because of the losses they are obliged to make? 
Are they not rather raised in feeling on this very account i 
If they all gained their precise point, or standing of suc- 
cess, by mere fortune, as by a ticket in some lottery, would 
the sacrifices and labors, thus avoided, be a clear saving, 
or addition to their happiness? Contrary to this, it 
would render their successes almost or quite barren of 
satisfaction. 

But how is this ? There are so many hard burdens and 
painful losses, or sacrifices, and yet they subtract nothing, 
we say, but rather add to the real amount of enjoyment, 
in the successes gained by endurance and industry There 
appears to be something bordering on contradiction here, 
how shall we solve it? 



282 HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

The solution is easy, viz., that the. sacrifice made is a 
sacrifice of happiness, a sacrifice of ease, pleasure, comfort 
of condition ; and the gain made is a gain of something 
more ennobling and more consciously akin to greatness, a 
gain that partakes, as far as any outward success can the 
nature of joy. The man of industry and enterprise, the 
scholar, the statesman, the hero, says within himself these 
are not gifts of fortune to me, they are my conquests ; 
tokens of my patience, economy, application, fortitude^ in- 
tegrity. In them his soul is elevated from within. He 
has a higher consciousness, and a felicity, of course, that 
partakes, in some remote degree, of the sublime nature of 
joy. Ifc is not condition, or things about him, making him 
happy, but it is the fire kindling within, the soul awaking 
to joy as a creative and victorious energy ; and, in this 
view, it is a faint realization, on the footing of a mere 
worldly life, of the immense superiority of joy to happi 
ness. And it will be found, accordingly, as a matter of fact, 
that men, even worldly men, despise and nauseate mere 
happiness, if we hold the word to its strictest and most 
proper meaning. Using it more loosely, they fancy, and 
will say, that they are after happiness. Still the instinct 
of a higher life is in them and they really despise what 
they do not conquer. None but the tamest and most 
abject will sit down to be nursed by fortune. All that 
have any real manhood we see cutting their way through 
severities and toils, that promise achievement, or a sense 
of victory. In such a truth, meeting your eyes on every 
hand, you may see how it is possible for the repentances, 
sacrifices, self-denials, and labors of the christian life, to 
issue in joy. If Christ requires you literally to renounce 
all happiness, all good of condition, nothing is more clear 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 23S 

than the possibility that e\en this may issue in a most, 
complete and sovereign joy. 

Or take an illustration, somewhat different, of the nature 
of these christian struggles and sacrifices. A great and 
noble spirit, some archangel or prince of the sky, who is 
highest in his mold of all the forms of created being, has 
somehow come under a conscious respect, we will suppose, 
to condition ; fallen out of joy and become a lover of for- 
tune or happiness. He finds that he is looking for good 
only in objects round him, and in things that imply no 
dignity of soul, or merit of quality in him ; shows and 
equipages, liveries, social rank, things that please his ap 
petite, or his lusts. He finds that he is living for these, 
a?id really makes nothing of any higher good ; living as 
if there were no fountains of good to be opened within ; 
or as if, being only a vegetable, there could be nothing for 
him better than just to feel what the rain, and sun, and soil 
of outward condition give him to feel. He blushes at the 
discovery, and drops his head. And, as he begins to weep, 
a thought of fire strikes out from his immortality, and he 
says, — No, it shall not be. God made me, not to be under 
and subject to things about me, or to ask my happiness at 
their hands. Eather was it for me to be above all crea- 
tures, as I was before them in order; having my joy in 
the greatness of my spirit, and the victorious freedom and 
fullness of my life. 0, I hear the call of my God! I 
will arise and be what he commands me to be. These 
felicities of fortune shall tempt me and humble me no 
more. I cast them off, I renounce them forever! 

In the execution, then, of such a purpose, you see him 
go to his work. That he may clear himself of the domin- 
ion of things, he gives up all his outward splendors of 

20- 



234 HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

state and show, makes a loss of all his resources and even 
comforts, and, finding his soul still looking covertly aftei 
the goods she has lost, he goes to frequent voluntary fast- 
ing, that he may clear himself yet more effectually from 
his bondage. He is not yet free. He finds the pampered 
spirit of self-indulgence still asking for ease, and indispos- 
ing him to victory. Then he asks for labor, seeks out 
something to be done, asks it of his God to give him some 
hard service, nay a warfare, if he will, that his soul may 
fiurht herself clear. 

o 

Now, the question I have to ask is this, — when you look 
upon the sacrifices and struggles of this great being, his 
losses, repentances, self-mortifications, works and warfares, 
does it seem to you that he is growing miserable under 
them? Do you not see how his consciousness rises in ele- 
vation, as he clears himself of his humiliating bondage; 
how his soul finds springs of joy opening in herself, as the 
good of condition falls off and perishes ; how every loss 
disencumbers him ; how every toil, and fasting, and fight, 
as it clears him more of the notion or thought of happi- 
ness, lifts him into a joy as much more ennobled as it is 
more sovereign ? Nay, you can hardly look on, as you see 
him fight his holy purpose through, without being kindled 
and exalted in feeling yourself by the sublimity of his 
warfare. 

But, exactly this is the true conception of the sacrifices 
required in the christian life. They are all required to 
emancipate the soul and raise it above its servile depend- 
ence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, 
and for just that reason they are preparations of joy. 

Having disposed, in this manner, of what may seem tc 
be facts opposed, or adverse to the supposition that chris- 



HAPPINESS AND JOY, 236 

tian sacrifice and piety support a victorious joj , I will now 
undertake to show trie positive reality itself. 

And here we notice, first of all, the fact that, in a life 
of selfishness and sin, there is a well-spring of misery, 
which, is now taken away. No matter what, or however 
fortunate, the external condition of an unbelieving, evi] 
mind, there is yet a disturbance, a bitterness, a sorrow 
within, too strong to be mastered by any outward felicity, 
The whole internal nature is in a state of discord. The 
understanding, conscience, will, affections, appetites, im- 
aginations, make a battle-field of the breast, and the un- 
happy subject is rasped, irritated, bittered, filled with 
fear, shamed by self-reproaches, stung by guilty convic- 
tions, gnawed by remorse, jealous, envious, hateful, lust- 
ful, discontented, fretful, living always under a sky in 
which some kind of storm is raging. And this discord ia 
the misery, the hell of sin. 0, if men had only some con- 
trary experience of the heavenly peace, how great this 
misery would seem. And yet they know it not, they even 
dare to imagine, sometimes, that they are happy ; just be- 
cause their experience has brought no contrasts, to reveal 
the torment they suffer. Still they break out notwith- 
standing,' now and then, with impatience, and vent their 
uneasiness in complaints that show how poorly they get 
on. They even testify, in words, that life is a burden. It 
is a burden, a much heavier and more galling burden than 
they know, and will be, even though they have all gifts of 
fortune, all honors and applauses crowded upon them, to 
make them happy. How much then does it signify, that 
Christ takes away this burden, restores this discord. Foi 
Christ is the embodied harmony of God, and he that re • 
eeives him settles into harmony with him, My peace I 



236 HAPPIXESS A.ND JOY. 

give unto you, is tlie Saviour's word, and this peace of 
Christ is the equanimity, dignity, firmness, serenity, which 
made his outwardly afflicted life appear to flow in a calmness 
so nearly sublime. Bring any most fortunate of worldly 
minds into this peace, and the mere negative power of it. 
in quelling the soul's discords, would even seem to be a 
kind of translation. Just to exterminate the evil of the 
mind, and clear the sovereign hell which sin creates in it, 
would suffice to make a seeming paradise. 

Besides there is a fact more positive, — the soul is such a 
nature that, no sooner is it set in peace with itself than 
it becomes an instrument in tune, a living instrument, dis- 
coursing heavenly music in its thoughts, and chanting 
melodies of bliss, even in its dreams. We may even say, 
apart from all declamation, for such is its nature, that when 
a soul is in this harmony, no fires of calamity, no pains 
of outward torment can, for one moment, break the sove- 
reign spell of its joy. It will turn the fires to freshening 
gales, and the pains to sweet instigations of love and 
blessing. 

Thus much we say, looking only at the soul's nature, it? 
necessary distraction under the power of evil, its necessary 
blessedness in the harmony of rectitude. But we must 
ascend to a plane that is higher, and consider, more directly, 
what pertains to its religious nature. Little conception 
have we of its joy, or capacities of joy, till we see it estab- 
lished in God. The christian soul is one that has come 
unto God, and rested in the peace of God. It dares to call 
him Father, without any sense of daring. It is in such 
confidence toward him, that it even partakes His confidence 
in Himself. It is strong with his strength, having all its 
faculties in a glorious play of energy. It endures hard- 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 237 

ness with facility. It turns adversity into peace, for it sees 
a friendly hand ministering only good in what it suffers. 
In dark times it is never anxious ; for God is its trust and 
God will suffer no harm to befall it. Having the testimony 
within that it pleases God, it approves itself in the holy 
smile of God, that consciously rests upon it. Divinely 
guided, walking in the Spirit, it is raised by a kind of inspir- 
ation. It sees God and knows him by an immediate and 
ever-present knowledge ; according even to the promise, — 
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. It 
is consciously ennobled, in this manner, by the proximity 
of God, expanded in volume, raised in greatness, thrilled 
by the eternal sublimities of God's deep nature and 
counsel. To a mind thus tempered, fortune can add little, 
and as little take away. Nothing can reach or, at least, 
break down a soul established in this lofty consciousness. 
It partakes a divine nature, it is become a kind of divine 
creature, and the clouds that overcast the sky of other 
men, sail under it. The hail that beats other men to the 
ground, the reproaches, execrations, conspiracies, and lies, 
under which other men are cowed, can not hail upward, 
and therefore can not reach the night of this divine confi- 
dence. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and per- 
secute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely 
for irry sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad. Such is the 
joy Christ bequeathed to his followers ; such the good 
tidings of great joy that he brought into the world. 

There is also, in the christian t}^pe of character, as re- 
lated to God, a peculiarity which needs, in this connection, 
to be mentioned by itself. It is a character, rooted in the 
divine love, and in that view is a sovereign bliss welling 
up from w~thin; able thus to triumph and sing, independ- 



233 HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

ent of all circumstance and condition. A human soul can 
love every body, in despite of every hindrance, and by 
that love, can bring every body into its enjoyment. No 
power is strong enough to forbid this act of love, none 
therefore strong enough to conquer the joy of love ; for 
whoever is loved, even though it be an enemy, is and must 
be enjoyed. Besides it is a peculiarity of love that it takes 
possession of its neighbor's riches and successes, and makes 
them its own. Loving him, it loves all that he has for 
his sake, whether he be friend or enemy ; enjoys his com- 
forts, looks on his prospects and all the beauties of his 
gardens and fields, with a pleasure as real as if they were 
legally its own. Love, in fact, overleaps all titles of law, 
and becomes a kind of universal owner ; appropriates all 
wealth, and beauty, and blessing to itself, and enters into 
the full enjoyment. It understands the declaration well, — 
for all things are yours. Having such resources of joy in 
its own nature, the word that signifies love, in the original 
of the New Testament, is radically one with that which 
signifies joy. According to the family registers of that 
language, they are twins of the same birth. Love is joy, 
and all true joy is love, — they can not be separated. And 
Christ is an exhibition to us of this fact in his own person, 
a revelation of God's eternal joy as being a revelation of 
God's eternal love ; coming down thus to utter in our ears 
this glorious call, as a voice sounding out from God's eter- 
nity, — Enter ye into the joy of your Lord. He finds us 
hunting after condition ; the low and questionable felicity 
of happiness. He says, behold my poverty, look on my 
burden of contempt, take the guage of my labors, note the 
insults and wrongs of my enemies, watch with me in my 
agony, follow me to my cross. This, 0, mortal! this, 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 239 

worshipper of happiness ! is my jot. I -give it to remain 
in you, that your joy, as mine, might be full. Enter into 
.^his love as God made vou to love, love with me vour 
enemies, labor and pray with me for their recovery to 
(rod, make my cause your cause, take up my cross and 
follow me, and then, in the loss of all things, you shall 
know that love is the sovereientv of erood, the highest 
throne of sufficiencv to which any beino\ created or uncre- 
ated, can ascend. Coming up into love, you clear all de- 
pendence of condition, you ascend into the very joy of 
God, and this is my joy. This I have taught you, this I 
now bequeath to your race. 

Now it is precisely in this love, and nowhere else, that 
the followers of Christ have actually found so great joy. 
This is their light, the day-star dawning in their he; 
the renewing of their inward man, their joy of faith, the 
believing that makes them rejoice with joy unspeakable 
and full of glory. By this they become exceeding joyful 
in all their tribulations. They are raised above the world 
and conquer it, in the loss they make of it ; — dying, anil 
still able to live ; chastened, but not killed : sorrowful, yet 
always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having 
nothing, yet possessing all things. Their heart is enlarged 
in the divine love, and is become, in that manner, a fount- 
ain of essential, eternal, indestructible, and sovereign joy. 
They realize, in a word, the very testament of Christ, — His 
joy is in them, and their joy is full. 

Mark now some of the inspiring and quickening 
thoughts that crowd upon us in the subject reviewed. 
And— 

1. ooj is for ail men. It does not depend on circv 



240 HAPPINESS AND JOY. 

stance, or condition ; if it did, it could only be for the few. 
It is not the fruit of good luck, or of fortune, or even of 
outward success, which all men can not have. It is of the 
soul, or the soul's character ; it is the wealth of the soul's 
own being, when it is filled with the spirit of Jesus, which 
is the spirit of eternal love. If you want, therefore, to 
know who of mankind can have the gift of joy, you have 
only to ask who of them have souls ; for every soul is 
made to be a well-spring of eternal blessedness, and will 
be, if only it permits the waters of the eternal love to rise 
within. It can have right thoughts and true, and be set 
in everlasting harmony with itself. It can love, and so ; 
without going about to find what shall bless it, it has all 
the material of blessing in itself; resources in its own im- 
mortal nature, as a creature dwelling in the light of God, 
which can not fail, or be exhausted ; — all men are for joy, 
and joy for all. 

2. It is equally evident that the reason why they do not 
have it, is that they do not seek it where it is, — in the re- 
ceiving of Christ and the spirit of his life. They go after 
it m things without, not in character within ; they have 
a]l faith in fortune, none in character. So they build 
palaces, and accumulate splendors about them, and keep a 
desert within. And then, since the desert within can not 
be made to rejoice in the gewgaws and vanities, without, 
they sigh, they are very melancholy, the world is a hard 
world, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Let them cease 
this whimpering about the vanities and come to Christ ; let 
them receive his joy, and there is an end to the hunger. 
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and ye shall 
find rest to your souls. There is nothing hard in what I 
require. When I call you to renounce all and take up 



HAPPINESS AND JOY. 241 

your cross and follow me, I only seek to withdraw you 
from the chase after happiness, that I may fill . you with 
joy. My yoke is easy, therefore, and my burden is light. 
Ah ! how many have found it to be exactly so ! What 
sm prise have they felt in the dawning of this Christian 
jo;y. They seemed about to lose every thing, and found 
themselves, instead, possessing all things. 

8. It is here seen to be important that we hold some 
rational and worthy conception of the heavenly felicity. 
How easy it is for the christian, who has tasted the true 
joy of Christ, to let go the idea of joy and slide into the 
pursuit only of happiness, or the good of condition. 
Worldly minds are in this vein always ; they more gener- 
allv do not even conceive any thin^ different, and the 
whole gravitation therefore of the world, both in its pur- 
suits and opinions, is in this direction. Heaven itself is 
thought of as a place, a condition, a kind of paradise ex- 
ternal, which has power to make every body happy. The 
question of universal salvation turns on just this point, in- 
quiring whether all souls will be got into the happy place, 
not whether they will all break into eternity as carrying 
the eternal joy with them. Stated in that manner, the 
question is even too absurd for debate. I very much fear 
too that those teachers who propose religion to us as a 
problem only of happiness, calling us to Christ that we 
may get the rewards of happiness, the highest happiness, 
degrade our conceptions, and let us down below the truth. 
When we speak of joy, we do not speak of something we 
are after, but of something that will come to us, when we 
are after God and duty. It is a prize unbought, and is 
freest, purest in its flow, when it comes unsought. No get- 
ting into heaven, as a place, will compass it. You must 

21 



242 HAPPINESS AND JOY 

carry it with you, else it 4 s not there. You must have it 
in you, as the music of a well-ordered soul, the fire of a 
holy purpose, the welling up, out of the central depths, of 
eternal springs that hide their waters there. It is the rest 
of confidence, the blessedness of internal light and outflow- 
ing benevolence, — the highest form of life and spiritual 
majesty. Being the birth of character, it has eternity in 
it. Eising from within, it is sovereign over all circum- 
stance and hindrance. It is the joy of the Lord in the 
soul of man, because it is joy like his, and because it is 
from Him, participated by the secret life of goodness. 

And this, my friends, is the glory of the heavenly state. 
If you have been thinking of heaven only as a happy 
place, looking for it as the reward of some dull, lifeless 
service, arguing it for all men, as the place where God will 
show his goodness, by making blessed loathsome and base 
souls, cheat yourselves no more by this folly. Consider 
only whether heaven be in you now. For heaven, as we 
have seen, is nothing but the joy of a perfectly harmonized 
being, filled with God and his love. The charter of it 
is, — He that overcometh shall inherit. It is the victorious 
energy of righteousness forever established in the soul. 
And this in us, pure and supreme, fulfills the glorious be- 
quest of Christ our Lord, — that my joy might remain in 
you, and that your joy may be full. It remains, — it is 
full. 






XIII, 

THE TRUE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

Revelations ii. 4. — "Nevertheless, I have somewhat 
against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. 11 

There are some texts of scripture that suffer a much 
harder lot than any of the martyrs, because their martyr- 
dom is perpetual ; and this I think is one of the number. 
Two classes appear to concur in destroying its dignity; 
viz., the class who deem it a matter of cant to make any 
thing of conversion, and the class who make religion itself 
a matter of cant, by seeing nothing in it but conversion. 

My object, however, is not so much to balance these 
opposites, or even to recover the passage of scripture that 
is lost between them; but it is to clear the way of all 
christian experience, by showing what it does and how it 
proceeds. There are many disciples of our time who, like 
the Ephesian disciples, are to be warmly commended for 
their intended fidelity, and are yet greatly troubled and 
depressed by what appears to be a real loss of ground in 
their piety. Christ knows their works, approves their 
patience, commends their withdrawing always from them 
that are evil ; testifies for them that they have withstood 
false teachers, with a wary and circumspect fidelity, made 
sacrifices, labored and not fainted; and yet they are com- 
pelled to sigh over a certain subsidence of that pure sensi- 
bility and that high inspiration, in which their disciplc- 
ship began. The clearness of that hour is blurred, the 



244 THE TKUE PEOBLEM OF 

fresh joy interspaced with dryness. Omissions of duty 
are discovered which they did not mean ; they do not en- 
joy the sacrifices they make as they once did, and make 
them often in a legal, self-constrained manner. Rallying 
themselves to new struggles, as they frequently do, to re- 
trieve their losses, they simply hurry on their own will, 
and therefore thrust themselves out of faith only the more 
rapidly. The danger is, at this Ephesian point of depres- 
sion, that not knowing what their change of phase really 
signifies, or under what conditions a real progress in holy 
character is to be made, they will finally surrender, as to a 
doom of retrogradation too strong to be resisted. I de- 
sign, if possible, to bring them help, calling their attention 
directly to these two points : — 

I. The relation of the first love, or the beginning of the 
christian discipleship, to the subsequent life. 

II. The relation of the subsequent life, including its appa- 
rent losses, to the beginning. 

What we call conversion is not a change distinctly trace- 
able in the experience of all disciples, though it is and 
must be a realized fact in all. There are many that grew 
up out of their infancy, or childhood, in the grace of Christ, 
and remember no time when they began to love him. 
Even such, however, will commonly remember a time, 
when their love to God and divine things became a fact so 
fresh, so newly conscious, as to raise a doubt, whether it 
was not then for the first time kindled. In other cases 
there is no doubt of a beginning, — a real, conscious, defi- 
nitely remembered beginning; a new turning to God, a 
fresh-born christian love. The conversion to Christ is 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 245 

marked as distinctly as that of the Ephesian church, when 
coming over to Christ, from their previous idolatry. The 
love is consciously first love, a new revelation of God in the 
soul; a restored consciousness of God, a birth of joy and 
glorified song in the horizon of the soul's life, like that 
which burst into our sky when Jesus was born into the 
world. All things were new, — Christ was new, the word 
a new light, worship a new gift, the world a new realm of 
beauty shining in the brightness of its author : even the man 
himself was new to himself. Sin was gone, and fear also 
was gone with it. To love was his all, and he loved every 
thing. The day dawned in joy, and the thoughts of the 
night were songs in his heart. Then how tender, how 
teachable ; in his conscience how true, in his works how 
dutiful. It was the divine childhood, as it were, of hia 
faith, and the beauty of childhood was in it. This was 
his first love, and if all do not remember any precise ex- 
perience of the kind, they do, at least, remember what 
was so far resembled to this as to leave no important 
distinction. 

I. What now is the import of such a state, what its re- 
lation to the subsequent life and character ? 

It is not, I answer, what they assume, who conceive it 
to be only a new thought taken up by the subject himself, 
which he may as naturally drop the next moment, or may 
go on to cultivate till it is perfected in a character. It is 
more, a character begun, a divine fact accomplished, in 
which the subject is started on a new career of regenerated 
liberty in good. I answer again that it is not any such 
thing as they assume it to be, who take it as a completed 
gift, which only needs tc be held fast. It is less, for less 

21* 



246 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

than this. To God it is one of his beginnings, which he 
will carry on to perfection ; to the subject himself it is the 
Jawn of his paradise, an experience that will stand behind 
him as an image of the glory to be revealed before, an ideal 
set up, in his beatitude, of that state in which his soul is 
to be perfected and to find its rest. In one view, indeed, 
it is a kind of perfect state, — a state resembled 10 inno- 
cence. It is free, it is full of God, it is for the time with- 
out care. New born, as it were, the spirit of a babe is in 
it. The consciousness of sin is, for a time, almost or quite 
suspended, — sin is washed away, the heart is clean. The 
eye is single, as a child's eye. The spirit is tender, as a 
child's spirit, — so ingenuous, so pure in its intentions, so 
simple in its love, that it even wears the grace of a 
heavenly childhood. 

In this flowering state of beauty the soul discovers, and 
even has in its feeling the sense of perfection, and is thus 
awakened from within to the great ideal, in which its bliss 
is to be consummated. The perfection conceived too and 
set up as the mark of attainment, is something more than 
a form of grace to be hereafter realized. It is now realized, 
as far as it can be — the very citizenship of the soul is 
changed ; it has gone over into a new world, and is entered 
there into new relations. But it has not made acquaint- 
ance there ; it scarcely knows how it came in, or how to 
stay, and the whole problem of the life-struggle is, to be- 
come established in what has before been initiated. 

There is a certain analogy between this state, paradisaie- 
dlly beautiful, pure, and clean, and that external paradise 
in which our human history began. What could be more 
lovely and blessed, what in a certain formal sense more 
perfect than the upright, innocent, all-harmonious child- 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 247 

hood of the first human pair. But it was beauty without 
strength, the ingenuous goodness of beings unacquainted 
with evil. A single breath of temptation is enough to 
sweep it all away. The only way to establish it is to lose 
it and regain it. Paradise lost and regained is not a con- 
ception only of the poet, but it is the grand world-prob- 
lem of probation itself. No state of virtue is complete, 
however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict 
with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and 
even bitter experience. Somewhat in the same way, it is 
necessary that a christian should fight out the conquest of 
his paradise, in order to be really established in it. There 
is no absolute necessity that he should lose it, nor any 
such qualified necessity as there was that the first man 
should fall from his integrity ; for he is, by the supposition, 
one who has learned already the bitterness of evil, by a 
life thus far steeped in the gall of it. He has been outside 
of his paradise, to look on it from thence, as Adam had 
not. He has only not been inside long enough to thorough- 
ly understand the place. He will commonly never be es- 
tablished in it, therefore, till he knows it more experiment- 
ally, and gets wonted in it. And yet there are a few, as 
I verily believe, who never go outside again, from the 
moment of their first entering, but stay within, unfold 
ing all their life long, as flowers, in their paradise, — trust- 
ful, ductile, faithful, and therefore unfaltering in then 
steadfastness. 

Still the probability that any one will continue in the 
clearness and freshness of his first love to God, suffering 
no apparent loss, felling into no disturbance or state of self- 
accusing doubt, is not great. And where the love is really 
not lost, it will commonly need to be conquered again, 



24:8 THE TRUE TROBLEM OF 

over and over, and wrought into the soul by a protracted 

and resolute warfare. The germ that was planted as im- 
pulse must be nourished by discipline. What was initiated 
as feeling must be matured by holy application, till it be- 
comes one of the soul's own habits. 

A. mere glance at the new-born state of love discovers 
how incomplete and unreliable it is. Eegarded in the 
mere form of feeling, it is all beauty and life. A halo of 
innocence rests upon it, and it seems a fresh made creature, 
reeking in the dews of its first morning. But how strange 
a creature is it to itself, — waking to the discovery of its 
existence, bewildered by the mystery of existence. An 
angel as it were in feeling, it is yet a child in self-under- 
standing. The sacred and pure feeling you may plainly 
see is environed by all manner of defects, weaknesses, and 
half-conquered mischiefs, just ready to roll back upon it 
and stifle its life. The really sublime feeling of rest and 
confidence into which it has come, you will see is backed, 
a little way off, by causes of unrest, insufficiency, anxious- 
ness and fear. Questions numberless, scruples, fluctuating 
.moods, bad thoughts, unmanageable doubts, emotions 
spent that can not be restored by the will, novelty passing 
by and the excitements of novelty vanishing with it, — 
there is a whole army of secret invaders close at hand, and 
you may figure them all as peering in upon the soul, from 
their places of ambush, ready to make their assault. And 
what is worst of all, the confidence it has in the Spirit of 
God, and which, evenly held, would Dear it triumphantly 
through, is itself unpracticed, and is probably underlaid 
by a suppressed feeling of panic, lest he should sometime 
take his leave capriciously. It certainly would not be 
strange, ii the disciple, beset by so many defects and so 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 2-j9 

little ripe in his experience, should seem lor a while 
to lose ground, even while strenuously careful to mamtair 
his fidelity. And then Christ will have somewhat against 
him. He will not judge him harshly and charge it against 
him as a crime that has no mitigations ; it will only be a 
fatal impeachment of his diseipleship, when he finally sur- 
renders the struggle, and relapses into a prayerless and 
worldly life. 

The significance then of the first love as related to the 
subsequent life, is twofold. In the first place, it is the 
birth of a new, supernatural, and divine consciousness in 
the soul, in which it is raised to another plane, and begins 
to live as from a new point. And secondly, it is so much 
of a reality, or fact realized, that it initiates, in the subject, 
experimentally, a conception of that rest, that fullness, and 
peace, and joyous purity, in which it will be the bliss and 
greatness of his eternity to be established. In both 
respects, it is the beginning of the end ; and yet, to carry 
the be2*innino- over to the end, and rive it there its due 
fulfillment, requires a large and varied trial of experience. 
The office and operation of this trial it now remains to 
exhibit as proposed. — 

II. In a consideration of the subsequent life, as related 
to the beginning, or first love. The real object of the sub- 
sequent life, as a struggle of experience, is to produce in 
wisdom what is there begotten as a feeling, or a new love: 
and thus to make a fixed state of that which was initiated 
only as a love. It is to convert a heavenly impulse into a 
heavenlv habit. It is to raise the christian childhood into 
a christian manhood, — to make the first love a second or 
completed love; or, what is the same, to fulfill the first 



250 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

love, and give it a pervading fullness in the soul ; such that 
the whole man, as a thinking, self-knowing, acting, choos- 
ing, tempted and temptable creature, shall coalesce with it 
and be forever Tested, immovably grounded in it. 

The paradise of first love is a germ, we may conceive, 
in the soul's feeling of the paradise to be fulfilled in its 
wisdom, And when the heavenly in feeling becomes the 
heavenly in choice, thought, judgment, and habit, so that 
the whole nature consents and rests in it as a known state, 
then is it fulfilled or completed. Then is the ideal awak- 
ened by the first love become a fact or attainment. See 
now, briefly, in what manner the experimental life works 
this fulfillment. 

At first the disciple knows, we shall see, very little of 
himself, and still less how to carry himself so as to meet 
the new state of divine consciousness, into which he is 
born. You may look upon him as literally a new, super- 
natural man, and just as a child has to learn the use of his 
own body, in handling, tasting, heaving, climbing, falling, 
running, so the new man learns, in the struggles of prac- 
tical life, his own new nature, — how to work his thoughts, 
rule his passions, feed his wants, settle his choices, and 
clear his affections. Thus, at last, his whole nature be- 
comes limber and quick to his love ; so that the life he 
had in feeling, he can operate, express, fortify, and feed 
At first, nothing co-operates in settled harmony with his 
new life ; but, if he is faithful, he will learn how to make 
every thing in him work with it, and assist the edifying of 
his soul in love. 

A great point with him is the learning how to maintain 
his new supernatural relation of sonship and vital access 
to God. Conscious of any loss, or apparent separation, he 



CHKISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 251 

is likely, at first, to throw himself out of God's peace only 
the more completely, by the panic he indulges, and the 
violent throes he makes to re-establish himself. The feel- 
ing in which he is raised to a participation of God can not 
instruct him how to maintain that participation, or to keep 
an open state of access. How to work his will, his inward 
suggestions and outward duties; how to shape his life and 
order his- prayers, so as to set himself always before God, 
and command a ready approach, he knows, as yet, only by 
the guidance of his feeling. But the struggle of experi- 
ence brings him into a growing acquaintance both with 
God and himself as related to God, removing in this man- 
ner his awkwardness, so that he is able to reject all false 
methods and all raw experiments, and address himself to 
God skillfull v, as a friend will address a friend. He knows 
exactlv how he must stand before God, to be one with him 
and abide in him. He comes into the secret of God easily 
and, as it were, naturally, and receives the manifestation 
of God as one who lives in the adoption of a son. 

In the same way, or by the same course of experience, 
he conceives, more and more perfectly what is the true idea 
of character. At first, character is to him a mere feeling / 
or impulse, a frame. Xext, perhaps, it becomes a life of ~ 
work and self-denial. Xext a principle, nothing but a ^ 
matter of principle. Xext he conceives that it is some- 
thing outwardly beautiful, a beautiful life. After a while, 
he discovers that he has been trying to. mold what is spirit- 
ual by his mere natural taste, and forgotten the first love, 
as the animating life and divine principle of beauty. And 
po he draws himself on, by degrees, through all the variant 
phases of loss and self-criticism, to a more full and rounded 
conception of character, returning at last to that which 



252 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

lay in his first love. So that character is, at last, conceived 
as a life whose action choice, thought, and expression are 
all animated and shaped by the spirit of holiness and divine 
beauty which was first breathed into his feeling. Nothing 
is so difficult to settle as the conception of a perfect char- 
acter ; nothing, at the same time, so necessary. And every 
faithful christian will be conscious of a constantly progress- 
ive change, in his conception of what he is to be. 

A very great point to be gained, by the struggle of ex- 
perience, is to learn when one has a right to the state of 
confidence and rest. At first the disciple measures him- 
self wholly by his feeling. If feeling changes, as it will 
and must at times, then he condemns himself, and condemn- 
ing himself perhaps without reason, he breaks his confi- 
dence toward God and stifles his peace. Then he is ready 
to die to get back his confidence, but not knowing how he 
lost it, he knows not where to find it. He had been at his 
business, and as that occupied his attention, it took off 
also somewhat of his feeling: charging this to the account 
of sin, and not to any want of experience in turning the 
mind so as to keep or recover its emotions, he put his con- 
science against him where it ought to have been his helper, 
and fell into the greater difficulty because he fell into 
mental confusion. Or perhaps he had played with his 
children, or he had talked in society about things not relig- 
ious, in order to accommodate the circle he was in : this 
touched the delicate feeling of his soul ; and, as feeling 
does not reason or judge, the wound was taken fcr admit- 
ted sin. On one occasion he did not give heed to some 
insignificant, or really absurd scruple. On another he 
declined some duty which really was no duty, and was 
better not to be done. In short, he was continually cor.- 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 253 

demning and tormenting himself, and gratuitously forbid- 
ding himself all confidence toward God. But finally, after 
battering down his own confidence and stifling his love in 
this manner by self-discouragement for many years, he 
is corrected by God's Spirit and led into a discovery of 
himself and the world that is more just, ceases to condemn 
himself in that which he alloweth, so to allow himself 
in anything which he condemneth ; and now behold 
what a morning it is for his love ! His perturbed 
anxious state is gone. God's smile is always upon him. 
His peace flows down upon him as a river from the 
throne. His first love returns, henceforth to abide and 
never depart. Everywhere it goes with him, into all the 
callings of industry and business, into social pleasures and 
recreations, bathing his soul as a divine element. 

By a similar process he learns how to modulate and 
operate his will. On one side his soul w r as in the divine 
love. On the other he had his will. But, how to work his 
will so as perfectly to suit his love, he at first did not know. 
He accordingly took his love into the care of his will; foi 
assuredly he must do all that is possible to keep it alive. 
He tiros deranged all right order and health within by his 
violent superintendence, battered down the joy he wished 
to keep, and could not understand what he should do 
more; for, as yet, all he had done seemed to be killing his 
love. He had not learned that love flows down only from 
God, who is its object, and cannot be manufactured within 
ourselves. But he discovers finally that it was first 
kindled by losing, for the time, his will. Understanding 
now that he is to lose his will in God's will, and abandon 
himself wholly to God, to rest in him and receive of his 
fullness; finding too that will is only a form of self -seeking, 



254 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

he makes a total loss of will, self, and all his sufficiency ; 
whereupon the first love floods his nature again, and bathes 
him liks a sea without a shore. And yet it will not be 
strange if he finds, within a year, that, as he once over- 
acted his will in self-conduct, so now he is underacting it 
in quietism ; that his love grows thin for want of energy, 
and, returning to his will again, he takes it up in God : 
dares to have plans and ends, and to be a person ; wrestles 
with God and prevails with him ; and so becomes, at last, 
a prince, acknowledged and crowned before him. 

His thinking power undergoes a similar discipline. At 
first, he doubted much, doubted whether he had a right to 
doubt, and whether he did doubt, and yet more how to get 
rid of his doubts. The clatter of his old, disordered, 
thinking nature began, ere long, to drown his love by the 
perpetual noise it made ; old associations led in trains of 
evil suggestion, which, like armies of wrath, overran and 
desolated his soul. He attacked every one of them in turn 
and that kept him thinking of the base things he wanted 
to forget. He discovers, at length, that all he can do is to 
fill his capacity with something better, — his mind with 
truth, his heart with God and faith, his hands with duty, 
and all with the holy enthusiasm of christian hope; and 
then, since there is no room left for idle fancies and vain 
v imaginations to enter, he is free, the torments of evil sug- 
gestion are shut away. The courses and currents of the 
soul are now cleared, and his thoughts, like couriers sent 
up through the empyrean, will return bringing visions of 
God and divine beauty to waken the pure first love and 
kindle its joyful flames. 

At first he had a very perplexing war with his motives. 
He feared that his motive was selfish, and then he feared 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 255 

that his fear was selfish. He dug at himself so intently, to 
detect his selfishness, as to create the selfishness he feared. 
The complications of his heart were infinite, and he became 
confused in his attempt to untwist them. He blamed his 
love to God because he loved him for his goodness, and 
then tried to love him more without any thought of his 
goodness. He was so curious, in fact, to know his motives 
that he knew nothing of them, and finally stifled his love 
in the effort to understand it, and act the critic over it. 
At length, after months or years it may be of desolation, 
he discovers, as he had never done before, that he was a 
child in his first love, and had a child's simplicity. And 
now he has learned simplicity by his trial ! Falling now 
into that first simplicity, there to abide, because he knows 
it, the first love blooms again, — blooms as a flower, let us 
hope, that is never to wither. His motive is pure, because 
it is simple ; and his eye, being single toward God, his 
whole body is full of light. 

Thus far it is supposed, in all the illustrations given, 
that the new love kindled bj r the Spirit has to maintain 
itself, in compamy with great personal defects in the sub- 
ject. These defects are a constant tendency in him to de- 
fections that correspond. Whenever he yields to them, he 
suifers a loss which is, in that case, a guilty or blameable 
loss. But he will sometimes be reduced or let down, sim- 
ply because, or principally because, he has too little skill 
or insight to avoid it. And this reduction will sometimes 
go so far as to be a kind of subsidence out of the super- 
natural into the natural state. He is confused and lost, 
and h : s very love appears to be quite dead. God is hid- 
den, as it were, behind a veil, and can not be found. Duties 
kept up, as by the Ephesians, without liberty, yield no 






256 THE TKUE PK0BLEM OF 

fruit of peace or blessing. And now, since it is not in the 
nature of a soul to stand empty and fight off evil, with no 
power left but a* vacuum, it will not be strange if he lets 
in the world, grows light, covetous, ambitious, and has 
only a name to live. All this, in one view, is but the 
working of his defects. Doubtless he is blameable, in a 
degree, though not as he would be if he had no such de- 
fects to contend with, Christ has somewhat against him, 
looks on him as one made subject to vanity not willingly, 
or willingly in part, and waits to restore him. His very 
losses too will be a lesson of experience really invaluable. 
He has learned his defects by his failures, and the day is 
not far distant when the dryness of his present experience 
will create, in his heart, an irrepressible longing for the 
recovery of the ground he has lost. Por there is yet, 
slumbering in his memory, the dim ideal of a first love to 
Christ. Around that ideal are gathered many distasteful 
recollections and associations ; but there is a faint, sweet 
light of beauty in the center. And now as, in turn, the 
world itself palls, that faint spot of light remembered as 
the dawn of love to Christ, will grow radiant and beam as 
a sun upon him. As a prodigal he will return ; as a prodi- 
gal returning, be met a great way off, and welcomed by 
his forgiving and rejoicing father. Now he is in his love 
as one instructed. His defects are corrected by his failures, 
and, by a common paradox of experience, supplemented 
by his losses; and so he is prepared to stand fast in his love. 
Sometimes a very dull and carnal, or capricious nature will 
go through this kind of bad experience more than once, 
and then will appear to be saved only so as by fire. But, 
more commonly, the time past of one such misery will 
suifioe. 



CHKISTIAX EXPERIENCE. 25~ 

Ton perceive, in this review, how every thing in the 
subsequent life of the disciple is designed of God to fulfil] 
the first love. A great part of the struggle which we call 
experience, appears to operate exactly the ether way ; to 
confuse and stifle the first fire of the spirit. Still the pro- 
cess of God is contrived to bring us round, at last, to the 
simple state which we embraced, in feeling, and help us to 
embrace it in wisdom. Then, the first love fills the whole 
nature, and the divine beauty of the child is perfected in 
the divine beauty of a vigorous and victorious manhood. 
The beginning is the beginning of the end, the end the 
child and fruit of the beginning. 

I am well aware that some will be dissatisfied with a view 
of the christian life that appears to anticipate so many 
turns and phases, and so much of losing experience. They 
will think it better to take a key-note that is lower, and 
start upon a level that can be maintained. Thus, if we say 
nothing of a conversion, or the high experience involved 
in that term, and commence a course of devout observ- 
ances and church formalities; or if, taking a different 
method, we set ourselves to a careful and diligent self-cul- 
ture, praying and worshipping as a part of the process, 
and for the sake of the effect, noting our defects, chasten- 
ing our passions, cherishing our religious tastes and senti- 
ments; then, in one or the other of these methods, we may 
go steadily on, it will be imagined, clear of all fluctuations, 
maintaining an even, respectable, and dignified piety. Yes, 
undoubtedly we may, and that for the very reason that we 
have no first love to lose, no fervors to be abated, and, in 
fact, no divine birth or experience at all. The piety com- 
mended is, in either case, a kind of stalagmite piety, built 

-2 -J* 



258 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

up from below, with the disadvantage of no drippings 
from above ; a really cavernous formation, upon which the 
true light of day never shone. In some cases, the soul 
may pass over in this manner imperceptibly, into some 
faint experience of God that is genuine ; but the dignity 
it boasts is the dignity of a consistent poverty and ignor- 
ance of God, and nothing is more easy to be maintained. 
On the other hand, the very reason why there are so many 
phases, or seeming lapses, in christian experience, is not 
because it is false, but oftener because it is genuine ; be- 
cause God has really dawned upon the soul's faith, and 
kindled a fire supernatural in its love. Hence, to settle it 
into this high relation, as a properly known relation, is 
often a work of much time and difficulty. The problem 
is neither more nor less than to learn the way of God, and 
come into practical acquaintance with him. And how can 
this be done without a large experience of defeat and dis- 
asters endlessly varied. How can a being so weak and 
ignorant, knowing, at first, almost nothing of the high re- 
lations into which he has come, learn to walk evenly with 
God, save as he is instructed by many waverings, reac- 
tions, irregularities, and throes of losing experience. 
Grazing in the pasture ground of a mere human culture, 
we might show more plausibly ; but now we move irregu- 
larly, just because we are in a level where the experience 
of nature does not instruct us. We lose ground, fall out 
of place, subside and waver, just because we are after 
something transcendent, something above us ; climbing up 
unto God, to rest our eternity in him, — a being whom, as 
yet, we do not sufficiently know, and whom to know is life 
eternal. Therefore we best like that kind of life which 
appears least plausible in present show, well understand- 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 259 

iiig that, if nothing more were in hand than simply tc 
maintain a level march, on the footing of mere nature, 
there is no feeblest christian, or even no-christian, who 
could not do it triumphantly. 

The fact then of a truly first love, the grand christian 
fact of a spiritual conversion or regeneration, is no way 
obscured by the losing experiences that so often follow. 
On the contrary, its evidence is rather augmented by these 
irregularities and seeming defections. And, if it be more 
than nothing, then it is, of all mortal experiences, the chief; 
a change mysterious, tremendous, luminous, joyful, fearful, 
every thing which a first contact of acquaintance with God 
can make it. 

Where the transition to this state of divine conscious- 
ness, from a merely self-conscious life under sin, is inartifi- 
cially made, and distorted by no mixtures of tumult from 
the subject's own eagerness, it is, in the birth, a kind of 
celestial state, like that of the glorified ; clear, clean, peace- 
ful, and full, wanting nothing but what, for the time, it 
does not know it wants; — the settled confidence, the prac- 
tically instructed wisdom, the established and tried charac- 
ter, of the glorified. And yet all the better is it, impara- 
dised in this glory, this first love, this regenerative life, 
this inward lifting of the soul's order, that a prize so trans- 
cendent is still, in a sense, to be won or fought out and 
gained as a victory. For life has now a meaning, and its 
work is great ; as great, in fact, in the humblest walks and 
affairs as in the highest. And the more difficulties one has 
to encounter, within and without, the more significant and 
the higher in inspiration his life will be. The very 
troubles that others look on with pity, as if he had takeD 



260 THE TRUE PROBLEM OF 

up a kind of piety more perilous and burdensome than 
was necessary, will be bis fields of victory, and bis course 
of life will be just as much happier as it is more consciously 
heroic. He has something great to live for, nay, something 
worthy even to die for, if he must, — that which makes it 
glorious to live and not less glorious to die. 

This war too is one, my brethren, as I verily believe 
that, in all that is bitterest and most painful, may be 
effectually carried and ended without waiting for the end of 
your life. The bitterness and painfulness are, in fact, no- 
where, except in the losing or apparently losing experiences 
of which I have been speaking, and these may assuredly 
be surmounted. There is a standing above all sense of loss, 
a peace of God that can not be shaken, a first love made 
second and final, into which you may come soon, if you 
are faithful, and in which you may abide. The doctrine 
of Wesley and his followers may be exaggerated, or par- 
tially misconceived ; I think it is. They appear to hold 
that there is a kind of second conversion, higher than the 
first, which they imagine is complete sanctification. But 
it is, if I am right, neither more nor less than the point of 
the first love reached again, with the advantage of much 
wisdom or self-understanding brought back with it. The 
disciple is, for that reason, stronger, wider in volume, more 
able to abide or stand fast. But, if he is not strong enough, 
he will very certainly take another circuit, and perhaps an- 
other. Enough that there is hope, — that there is a state of 
profound liberty, assurance, and peace, which you may at- 
tain to, and in which you may abide. Indeed, the original 
love itself was but a foretaste in feeling, of that which 
you mav achieve in wisdom ; and you are to set that mark 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 261 

In your eye, expecting to emerge again, or to climb patiently 
up into a state of purity and fellowship closely resembled tc 
that. 

If, then, you have now become entangled, discouraged, 
darkened, — if you seem to have quite given over, — blame 
yourself, not in your infirmity, but only in your sin. See, 
if possible, exactly what and where your blame is, and let 
your repentances and confessions exactly cover it. Prob- 
ably you did not fall consentingly, but you seem to have 
been thrown by your own distracted, half illuminated 
mind. You struggled hard, and with so great self-exer- 
tion, not unlikely, that you fell out of faith, and were even 
floored by your struggles themselves. You fanned the 
love so violently that you rather blew out than kindled 
the flame. The harder you lifted, the deeper in mire you 
sunk. At last, you gave over with a sigh, and fell back 
as one quite spent. And now, it may be that you even 
look upon the whole subject of spiritual religion with a 
kind of dread. It wears a painful and distasteful look. 
And yet there is one bright spot in the retrospect ; viz., 
the gentle, ingenuous, heavenly feeling, the peace, the 
cleanness, the fullness of heart, the liberty in God and his 
love, the luminous, inward glory ; and, if you could see 
nothing else but this, how attractive the remembered bless- 
edness would be; the more attractive for the emptiness 
you have since experienced, and the general distaste of the 
world, which so often afflicts you. Nay, with all the dis- 
respect you may possibly put on this former experience, it 
is precisely this and the opening of your higher nature in 
it, that makes a great part of the distaste you now suffer 
toward the world. What a call then have you in this joy 



26*2 PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

remembered! And God indorses it, offering to seal all this 
upon yon, and more. He blames you not for any thing 
unavoidable, he only blames you for your letting go of 
Him, and your final surrender of the struggle. This he 
waits to forgive. He will do more, he will even make 
what is blameable in your sad loss and defection turn to 
your account. Can you ask encouragement to a new effort 
better than this? Come back then, 0, thou prodigal, to 
thy father! Quit thy sad folly and emptiness, thy re- 
proaches of soul, thy diseased longings, and thy restless 
sighs. Eeturn again to thy God, and give thyself to him, 
in a final and last sacrifice. Ask the restored revelation. 
Conquer again, as Christ will help you, the original love, 
in that to abide and rest. 



XIV. 

THE LOST PUEITY EESTCEED. 

1 John", iii. 3. — " And every man that hath this hope in 
him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" 

This hope, as the apostle is speaking, is a hope to be 
with Christ; and as Christ is, in highest verity, the mani- 
festation of God who is infinite purity, it is a hope to be 
concomitant with purity, the purity of Christ and of God ; 
which again is but a hope of being entered into, and per* 
fectly answerable to, the purity of God. And then it 
follows, yet again, that every man that hath this hope in 
him will be purifying himself here on earth, even accord- 
ing to the purity of Chiist with whom he hopes to be. 

Accordingly the subject raised for our consideration is 
purity of soul, as the aim of spiritual redemption, and the 
legitimate issue of Christian experience. Let us see — 

I. If we can form a fit conception of what purity is. If 
we refer to examples, it is the character of angels and of 
God — the simplicity, the unstained excellence, the un- 
dimmed radiance, the spotless beauty. Or it is God as 
represented here on earth, in the sinless and perfect life of 
Christ ; his superiority to sense and passion and the opin- 
ions of the world, his simple devotion to truth, his unam- 
bitious goodness, his holy, harmless, undefiled life, as being 
with, yet separate from sinners. 

If we go to analogy, purity is, in character, what trans- 



264 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

pareuey is in the crystal. It is water flowing, unmixed 
and clear, from the mountain spring. Or it is the white of 
snow. Or it is the clear open heaven, through which the 
sparkling stars appear, hidden by no mist of obstruction. 
Or it is the pure light itself in which they shine. A pure 
character is that, in mind and feeling and spirit of life, 
which all these clear, untarnished symbols of nature, im- 
age, in their lower and merely sensible sphere, to our out- 
ward eye. 

Or if we describe purity by reference to contrasts, then 
it is a character opposite to all sin, and so to most of what 
we see in the corrupted character of mankind. It is inno- 
cent, just as man is not. It is incorrupt as opposed to pas- 
sion, self-seeking, foul imaginations, base desires, enslaved 
affections, a bad conscience and turbid currents of thought. 
Lt is the innocence of infancy without the stain — that inno- 
cence matured into the spotless, positive and eternally es- 
tablished holiness of a responsible manhood It is man 
lifted up out of the mires of sin, washed as a spirit into 
the clean white love and righteousness of his redeemer, 
and so purged of himself as to be man, without any thing 
of the sordid and denied character of a sinner. 

Or we may set forth the idea of purity, under a refer- 
ence to the modes of causes. In the natural world, as for 
example in the heavens, causes act in a manner that i3 
unconfused and regular. All things proceed according to 
their law. Hence the purity of the firmament. In the 
world of causes, it is the scientific ideal of purity that 
events transpire normally, according to the constitutive 
order and original law of the creation. But as soon as a 
soul transgresses, it breaks out of order, and its whole in- 
ternal working becomes mixed, confused, tumultuous, 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 265 

corrupt. Abiding in God, all its internal motions would 
proceed in the simple, harmonious, orderly progress of the 
firmament, and it would be a pure soul. Plunging into 
sin, it breaks order and falls into mixtures of causes in all 
its actions. The passions are loose upon the reason, the 
will overturns the conscience, the desires become unruly, 
the thoughts are some of them suggested by the natural 
law of the mind, and some are thrust in by the disorders of 
vitiated feeling, corrupt imagination, disordered memory, 
and morbid impulse. In short, the soul is in a mixture 
of causes, and so out of all purity. The man is corrupted, 
as we say, and the word corrupt means broken together, dis- 
solved into mixture and confusion — which is the opposite 
of purity. 

Or finally, we may describe purity absolutely as it is 
when viewed in its own positive quality. And here it is 
chastity of soul, that state of the spiritual nature in which 
it is seen to have no contacts, or affinities, but such as fall 
within the circle of unforbidden joy and uncorrupted 
pleasure. It is unsensual, superior to the dominion of pas- 
sion, living in the pleasures of the mind and of goodness, 
devoted in its virgin love, to the converse of truth only, 
and inaccessible to evil. Absolute purity is untemptable, 
as in God. Adam therefore was never m absolute purity. 
His purity was more negative than positive. He was in- 
nocent, he had not sinned; but for want of an established 
positive purity, he was ready to be tempted and open to 
temptation. But if he is now among the glorified, he is 
in absolute purity because he is untemptable. Real chas- 
tity is that which can not know temptation, and this is 
what we mean by absolute purity. It puts the soul an 
truly asunder and apart from the reach of evil sugges- 

23 



266 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

tion as God himself is, in the glorious chastity of his 
holiness. 

In all these methods we make so many distinct approaches 
to the true idea of spiritual purity. Distant as the charac- 
ter is from any thing we know in this sad world of defile- 
ment and corrupted life, still it is the aim and purpose oi 
Christian redemption, as I now proceed — 

II. To show, to raise us up into the state of complete 
purity before God. The call of the word is, — Come now 
and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your 
sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow ; though 
they be red like crimson they shall be as wool. And it is 
curious, to observe, when we read the scripture, what an 
apparatus of cleansing God appears to have set in array 
for the purification of souls; — sprinklings, washings, bap- 
tisms of water and, what are more searching and more 
terribly energetic purifiers, baptisms of fire; fierce meltings 
also as of silver in the refiner's crucible; purifyings of the 
flesh and purgings of the conscience; lustrations of blood, 
even of Christ's own blood ; washings of the word, and 
washings of regeneration by the Holy Ghost. It would 
seem, on looking at the manifold array of cleansing ele- 
ments, applications, gifts and sacraments, as if God had 
undertaken it as the great object and crowning mercy of 
his reign, to effect a solemn purgation of the world. We 
seem, as we read, to see him summoning up all angels and 
ministers of his will and instruments of his power, and 
sending them out in commission to cleanse the sin of the 
world, or even to wash the defiled planet itself into purity. 

Or, if we observe more directly what is said concerning 
the particular object of Christ's mission as a work of 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 267 

redemption, it is plainly 'declared that he gave himself for 
the church, — That he might sanctify and cleanse it with 
the washing of water by the word, that he might present 
it unto himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrin- 
kle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and with- 
out blemish. And then again the disciple himself who 
has embraced the Lord, in that which is the chief mercy 
and last end of his mission, will purify himself, it is de- 
clared, even as Christ is pure ; that is, if I rightly under- 
stand the language of the text, he will be engaged to pu- 
rify himself, endeavoring after purity, such as Christ him- 
self reveals. It is not intended, I suppose, to affirm that 
every disciple, in the Christian hope, has actually become 
as pure as Christ, but only that this is his end or mark. 

But a question rises here of great practical significance, 
viz., whether, by a due improvement of the means offered 
in Christ, or by any possible faith in him, it is given us to 
attain to a state which can fitly be called purify, or which 
is to itself a state consciously pure? 

To this, I answer both yes and no. There may be a 
Christian purity that is related to the soul as investiture, 
or as a condition superinduced, which is not of it, or in it, 
as pertaining to its own quality, or to the cast of its own 
habit. Christ, in other words, may be so completely put 
on that the whole consciousness may be of him, and all 
the motions of sins give way to the dominating efficacy of 
his harmonious and perfect mind ; when, at the same time, 
the subject viewed in himself, or in the contents and modes 
of causes in his own personality, is disordered, broken, 
mixed, chaotic, and widely distant still from real purity. 
The point may be illustrated by a supposition. Let a man 
habitually narrow and mean in his dispositions, fall into 



268 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

the society of a great and powerful nature in some one 
distinguished for the magnanimity of his impulses. Let 
this nobler being be accepted as his friend, trusted in, loved 
admired, so as to virtually infold and subordinate the mean 
person, as long as he is with him, to his own spirit. This, 
at least we can imagine, whether any such example ever 
occurred or not. Now it will be seen that, as long as this 
nobler natire is side by side with the other, it becomes a 
kind of investiture, clothes it, as it were, with its own im- 
pulses and even puts it in the sense of magnanimity. 
Consciously now the mean man is all magnanimous ; for 
his mean thoughts are, by the supposition, drunk up uud 
lost in the abysses of the nobler nature he clings to. He 
is magnanimous by investiture ; that is, by the occupancy 
of another, who clothes him with his own characters. But 
if you ask what he is in his own personal habit, cast, or 
quality, he is little different, possibly, from what he was 
before. He has had the consciousness waked up in him 
of a generous life and feeling, which is indeed a great boon 
to his meagre nature, and if he could be kept, for long 
years, in the mold of this superinduced character, he would 
be gradually assimilated to it. But if the better nature 
were to be soon withdrawn by a separation, he would fall 
back into the native meanness of his own proper person, 
and be what he was with only slight modifications. 

Now Christ, in his glorious and divine purity, is that 
better nature which has power, if we believe in him with 
a total all-subjecting faith, to invest us with a complete 
consciousness of purity, to bring every thought into cap- 
tivity to his own incorruptible order and chastity. He is 
such a cause upon us, when so received, that all our mixed 
modes of causes, will be subjected to the interior chime of 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 269 

his own all perfect harmony. Our consciousness even k» 
cast in the molds of his ; for he is so effectually put on, 
that he dominates in the whole movement of our experi- 
ence. This, at least, is conceivable as being the permitted 
or possible triumph of faith ; while, at the same time, re- 
garding what we are in ourselves and apart from this di- 
vine investiture, we are very far from any suoh purity. 
Still the case is varied here from that which we just now 
supposed, in the fact that the assimilation of the subject 
party will be more rapid and certain, because of the agency 
of the Spirit concurring with the power of Christ ; and 
also in the fact that the union established by faith is more 
interior and more indissoluble. He may, therefore, have the 
Spirit to work in him and the power of Christ to rest upon 
him in such measure as to be kept in the conscious chastity 
of Christ's own love, year by year, and be wrought into a 
continually approaching assimilation to it. 

The answer thus given to the question raised agrees at 
all points, it will be seen, with the scripture, and particu- 
larly with what is taught by our apostle in close connec- 
tion with my text. On one side of it he writes, — If we say 
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is 
not in us ; for, however deep we are in our union to Christ, 
or however completely we are invested in his purity, we 
are not in ourselves restored, in the same degree, to the 
character of it. We are in a kind of anticipative purity, 
which is becoming personal to us and a fixed habit; we 
are living to be pure, as Christ is ; but, regarded as apart 
from him, the work is only initiated, — we still have sin, 
we are broken, disordered, and corrupt. For, as long as 
we abide m Christ, our action is from him, not from our 
own corrupt and broken nature; exactly as the apostle 



270 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

writes, on the other side of the text, or immediately after : — 
"Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. He lives in a con- 
sciousness, that is, which is not sustained by his own mere 
humanly personal character, but by the sense of another, 
and the righteousness that is of God by faith upon him, 

The result, consequently, is that, being thus held up by 
the attachment to him of Christ's affinities, he is growing 
like him, — pure as he is pure. The diseased qualities 
gendered in him, heretofore, are being gradually purged 
away. His passions are being tamed to order and refined 
to God's pure dominion. His imaginations settle into the 
truth, and grow healthy and clear. The fashion of this 
world is not only broken, as it was in the first moment of 
God's discovery to his heart, but the memories of it fade, 
the diseased longings are healed, so that all his old affini- 
ties, in this direction, will at last be extirpated. Ail the 
mixed causes involved in sin or spiritual impurity will fall 
into chime, and all the foul currents of evil suggestion be 
cleared to a transparent flow. The mind will grow regu- 
lar and simple in its action, ceasing to be vexed, as it was, 
by noxious mixtures of fear, selfishness, doubt, and tempt- 
ation. And so all the inbred corruptions of its bad state — 
that is, those which remain over as effects of sin, after sin as 
a voluntary life is forsaken — will be gradually purged away. 

To illustrate how far it is possible for this purifying 
work to go on in the present life, I will simply say that 
the very currents of thought, as it is propagated in the 
mind, may become so purified that, when the will does not 
interfere, and the mind is allowed, for an hour, to run in its 
own way, without hindrance, one thing suggesting another 
as in reven T , there may yet be no evil, wicked, or foul sug 
gestion thrust into it. Or in the state of sleep, where the 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 271 

will never interferes, but the thoughts rush on by a law 
of their own, the mixed causes of corruption may be so 
far cleared away, and the soul restored to such simplicity 
and pureness, that the dreams will be only dreams of love 
and beauty ; peaceful, and clear, and happy ; somewhat as 
we may imagine the waking thoughts of angels to be, 
There have been Christians, who have testified to this 
heavenly sereneness of thought, out of their own experi- 
ence. And precisely this is w T hat Paul refers to, when he 
speaks of bringing into captivity every thought to the 
obedience of Christ. When the mixed causes are taken 
captive in the soul, and Christ is the law of the whole action, 
then, in the same degree, simplicity returns and purity. 

Still the body is dead because of sin. Disease, corrup- 
tion, so far, at least, remain, and therefore it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be. Perfect, absolute purity it is 
hardly supposable may be realized here. Enough to know 
that there need be no limit to the process, while life re- 
mains, and that, when life ends, it may be gloriously ap- 
proximated to the state of completeness. 

Or perhaps some one of my audience may just here 
raise a doubt from the other side, — whether absolute 
purity can ever be restored. Can the soul's chastity, once 
lost, ever be recovered ? Having once sinned, can it ever 
become pure in the absolute and perfect sense, as if it had 
not? Let no such doubt be harbored. We must not be 
too much under the power of social impressions. If so- 
ciety pronounces on the irredeemable loss of fallen chasti- 
ty, society has no mercy ; and pride, as well as truth, enters 
into its relentless judgments. Be this as it may, God has 
undertaken to redeem the fall of sin, and restore the soul 
to purity as a condition of absolute holiness. Browned by 



272 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

sin, mottled by the stains of a corrupted life, he has under- 
taken still to give it the whiteness of snow. True he can 
not undo what has been done. The sin is committed, the 
corruption has followed. Therefore, if there were any 
prudishness in angelic minds, they might well enough re- 
fuse forever to own us as beings intact by sin. And yet 
God can raise us to a purity that is higher even than the 
purity of an intact virtue. He can make us untemptably 
pure, pure even as Christ is pure, which Adam certainly 
was not. What we call purity in him, prior to his sin, is 
beautiful and lovely ; a pure white lily blooming in the 
creation's morning ; but it is frail also and temptable, and, 
before the noon is up, it hangs upon a broken stem, dis- 
honored and torn. God can raise us up, if not to the same, 
yet to a much higher, and stronger, and more absolute chasti- 
ty, the participation, viz., of his own unchangeable holiness ! 
Having this view of Christ and his gospel, as the plan 
of God for restoring men to a complete spiritual purity; 
seeing that he invites us to this, gives us means and aids 
to realize this, and yields to them that truJy desire it a hope 
so high as this, I proceed — 

III. To inquire in what manner we may promote our 
advancement toward the state of purity, and finally have 
it in complete realization. 

And, first of all, we must set our heart upon it. We 
must learn to conceive the beauty, and glory, and the es- 
sential beatitude of a pure state. We must see the degra- 
dation, realize the bitterness, confusion, disorder, instabili- 
ty, and conflict of a mixed state, where all the causes of 
internal action are thrown out of God's original law. We 
must learn to conceive, on the other hand t - and what can 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 27S 

be more difficult — the dignity, the beauty, the infinitely 
peaceful and truly divine elevation of a pure soul. Noth- 
ing is more distant from us, in our unreflective, headlong 
state of carnality and self-devotion, than to conceive purity. 
It is high like God, and we can not attain unto it. And 
therefore our desire after it can not be duly inflamed, or 
kindled ; — as it must be, if we are ever to obtain it. 
Labor then, with all closest, most persistent application, to 
conceive purity ; — what it would be to you, if your soul 
were in it ; the consciousness of it ; the essential peace ; 
the elevation above all passion and unregulated impulse ; 
the singleness and simplicity of it ; the glowing shapes 
and glorified visions of a pure imagination ; the oneness 
of your soul with God; the conscious participation of 
what is highest in God, his untemptable chastity in good- 
ness and truth. Work at this idea of purity, turn it round 
and round in your contemplations, reach after it, pray 
yourself into it, and have it thus as the highest conceiv- 
able good, the real good you seek, — to be pure. Let it be 
your life to envy God's purity, if I may so speak ; for, if 
there be any holy, and blessed, and fruitful kind of envy, 
it is this. Have it as the accepted aim and effort of youi 
life, to be assimilated thus in purity to God ; for when such 
a desire becomes practically fixed in you, the way will 
certainly be found. The way to purity is difficult oi 
discovery only to those who practically do not care to 
find it. 

One of your early discoveries will be, that the way to 
attain to parity of soul is, not to forsake the world and re- 
tire from it. This wan the error that originally carried 
men and women into remote deserts and caves, and finally 
built up monasteries and instituted vows of single life, or 



274 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED 

celibacy. It was to get away from the world, and have 
nothing to think of but Grod, and so to present the soul as 
a chaste virgin to Christ. It was called the state of spirit- 
ual chastity, and the souls thus taken out of the world 
were supposed to be specially pur # e and incorrupt, or in a 
certain way to be. It was as if the church had prayed, 
directly against Christ's word, to be taken out of the world. 
And then, what a horrible imposture did this unchristian 
gospel of purity prove itself, ere long, to be! No, the 
only real and truly christian way of purity is to live in the 
open world and not be of it, and keep the soul unspotted 
from it. There are no fires that will melt out our drossy 
and corrupt particles like God's refining fires of duty and 
trial, living, as he sends us to live, in the open field of the 
world's sins and sorrows, its plausibilities and lies, its per- 
secutions, animosities, and fears, its eager delights and bit- 
ter wants. 

St. Francis de Sales had been able, in his knowledge of 
the cloistered men and the cloistered life, to see how neces- 
sary it is for the soul to be aired in the outward exposures 
of the world, and, if we do net stop to question the facts 
of his illustrations, no one has spoken of this necessity 
with greater force and beauty of conception. " Many per- 
sons believe," he says, "that, as no beast dares taste the 
seed of the herb Palma Christi, so no man ought to aspire 
to the palm of christian piety, as long as he lives in the 
bustle of temporal affairs. Now, to such I shall prove 
that, as the mother-pearl fish lives in the sea without re- 
ceiving a drop of salt water ; and as, toward the Chelido- 
irian islands, springs of fresh water may be found in the 
midst of the sea; and as the fire-fly passes through the 
flames, without burning its wings; so a vigorous and reso- 






TEE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 275 

lute soul may live in the world, without being infected 
with any of its humors, may discover sweet springs of pietj 
amidst its salt waters, and fly among the flames of earthh 
concupiscence, without burning the wings of the holy de- 
sires of a devout life." It was only forbidden him to say, 
what is not forbidden me, that here alone, in these common 
exposures of work and contacts of duty, is true christian 
purity itself successfully cultivated. Alas ! for the man 
who is obliged, to be shut up to himself, as in the convent 
life, to face his own lusts, disorders, and passions, and 
strangle them in direct conflict, with nothing else to do or 
to occupy the soul. 

Having this determined, that he who will purify himself 
as Christ is pure must live in the world, then one thing 
more is needed, viz., that we live in Christ, and seek to be 
as closely and intimately one with him as possible. And 
this includes more things than the time will suffer me to 
name. 

First, a willingness wholly to cease from the old man, as 
corrupt, in order that a completely new man from Christ 
may be formed in you ; for, if you will halve the sacri- 
fice and retain what portion is safe or convenient of the 
old life of nature, it is no such thing as purity that you 
propose, nothing but a baptizing of mixture and defile- 
ment. I call it a new man that you want, after the scrip- 
ture method, because the character is the man more truly 
than any thing else, and there is no purity but to be com- 
pletely new. Therefore the old must as completely 
die, — which it will not, if wc secretly nourish and cling 
to it. 

Secondly, the life must be determined implicitly by the 
faith of Christ, Purifying their hearts by faith, sa3 r s an 



276 THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 

apostle; well understanding that faitli in Christ as the true 
sacrifice and grace, is the only power that can purge the 
conscience from dead works to serve the living God in 
purity. It is faith only that can truly appropriate Christ 
as a Saviour, able to save to the uttermost, and faith- 
ful to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Then again, 
which is more, if possible, it is faith alone that enables one 
to embrace Christ as a power, and live in the society of his 
person ; for it is thus, pre-eminently, that a soul may be- 
come purified. It is Christ beheld, with face unveiled, re- 
flecting God's own beauty and love upon us, as in a glass, 
that changes us from glory to glory. If by faith we go 
with Christ ; if we bear his cross in duty after him ; if we 
hang upon his words, wrestle with him in his agony, die 
with him in his passion, rise with him in his resurrection ; 
in a word, if we are perfectly insphered in his society, so 
as to be of it, then we shall grow pure. The assimilating 
power of Christ, when faithfully adhered to as the soul's 
divine brother, and lived with and lived upon, will infalli- 
bly renovate, transform, and purify us. The result is just 
as certain as our oneness or society with him. We shall 
grow pure because he is. The glorious power of his char- 
acter and life will so invest our nature, that we shall 
be in it and live it. It is only they that talk much of 
faith, meaning by it the faith of notions and opinions, 
and not the faith of Jesus as a personal revelation, — - 
these only it is who can not be purified by their faith. 
Sometimes they even have it as their merit, judging from 
their confessions, that they are growing more and more 
corrupt. Having that faith to which Jesus is personally 
revealed, you can be conscious of a growing purity of soul, 
and I know not any other way. God forbid that you should 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 277 

think of making purity for yourself, or by any operation 
on yourself. It must flow into you from above. It must 
be the new man that is created in Christ Jesus, — created 
by your faith, as receiving of him and of his fullness, 
grace for grace. And 0, the dignity, the conscious bless- 
edness of a life of faith, when it knows in itself, or dis- 
tinctly sees, the divine purity forming its own chaste image 
of love and truth within ; — beholds the fine linen, clean 
and white, which is the righteousness of the saints invest- 
ing the soul, as a robe of life from God! In such a 
life there is consciously something going on, which an- 
swers to the great errand of life and gives it the seal of 
blessing. 

Again, passing over many other particulars, I will simply 
draw your minds a little closer to the text by observing, 
as included in the general idea of living in Christ, a look- 
ing forward to him in his exalted state, and an habitual 
converse with him there, " He that hath this hope in him/' 
says the text ; — understanding that the hope of being with 
Christ, and seeing him as he is, does of itself draw the soul 
toward his purity. I say not that we are to be looking 
away to heaven, as being disgusted with the world ; much 
less to be praising heaven's adorable purity in high words 
of contrast, as if to excuse or atone for the lack of all 
purity here. I only say that we are to be much in the 
meditation of Christ as glorified, surrounded with the glori- 
fied ; to let our mind be hallowed by its pure converse and 
the themes in which it dwells; to live in the anticipation 
of what is most pure in the universe, as being what wo 
most love and long for in the universe ; and so we are 
to be raised by our longings, and purified with Christ bj 
the hop?s we rest upon his person. This hope, this reaeh- 

24 



278 



THE LOST PUKITY RESTORED 



mg upward of soul to Christ, is exactly what Paul means, 
when he speaks of living a life that is hid with Christ in 
God. When a soul is there infolded, hid with Christ in 
the recesses of God's pure majesty, 0, what airs of health 
breathe upon it and through it ! how vital does it become, 
and how rapidly do the mixed causes of sin settle into the 
transparent flow of order and peace ! 
It only remains to just name — 



IV. Some of the signs by which our growth in purity 
may be known. This I will do in the briefest manner 
possible, and conclude. 

Fastidiousness then, I will first of all caution you, is not 
any evidence of purity, but the contrary. A fastidious 
character is one that shows, by excess of delicacy, a real 
defect and loss of it. It is too delicate to be practical, 
simply because it is practically indelicate and corrupt. 
Hence, in religion, it is a great principle that, to the pure 
all things are pure. When any disciple, therefore, calls it 
purity to be shocked or repelled by the scripture names of 
sins, or the practical works of mercy needed in a world 
of shame and defilement, he reveals therein a bad imagina- 
tion and a mind that is itself defiled. No, the true signs 
of purity are these : — 

That we abide in the conscious light of God, while liv- 
ing in a world of defilement, and know him as a presence 
manifested in the soul. Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God. Purity sees God. 

A good conscience signifies the same ; for the conscience, 
like the eye, is troubled by any speck of defilement and 
wrong that falls into it. 

A growing sensibility to sin signifies the same ; for, if 



THE LOST PUKITY RESTORED. 279 

the conscience giows peaceful and clear, it will also grow 
tender and delicate. 

If you are more able to be singular and think less of the 
opinions of men, not in a scornful way but in love, that 
again shows that the world's law is losing its power over 
you, and your devotion to God is growing more single and 
true. 

Do you find that passion is submitting itself to the gentle 
reis;n of God within vou, losing its heat and fierceness, 
and becoming tamed under the sweet dominion of chris- 
tian love ? That again is the growth of purity. 

The discovery that your imagination ceases to revel in 
images of wrong, revenge, and lust, becoming at once 
more quiet and more clear, conceiving God and Christ and 
unseen worlds of purity, with greater distinctness and sub- 
limity, and roving, as by a divine instinct, among the eter- 
nal verities and transcendent glories of a perfect state, ask- 
ing there to be employed and nowhere else with so great 
zest, — this also shows that a high and sacred affinity for what 
is pure is growing stronger and more clear within you. 

So, again, if jovoc feeling reaches after heaven, and your 
longings are thitherward, if you love and long for it because 
chiefly of its purity ; loosened from this world not by your 
wearinesses and disgusts, which all men suffer, but by the 
positive affinities of your heart for what is best and purest 
above, — this also is a powerful token of growing purification. 

Do you also find that your thoughts, when freest and 
most unrestrained, are yet growing simple, orderly, right, 
and true, interrupted less and less frequently by bad 01 
wicked suggestion? — then you have in this a most convinc- 
ing and conclusive proof, that you are being delivered of 
the mixtures and defilements of a corrupted nature. 



280 THE LOST PUKITY RESTOKED. 

Or, again, it is a yet more simple sign, and one that in- 
cludes, in a manner, all others, if you find that you are 
deeper and deeper in the love of Christ. For, if Christ 
spreads himself over your being, and you begin to know 
nothing else and want nothing else ; if you love him foi 
his character, as the only perfect, and cleave to his sinless 
life, as the holiest, and loveliest, and grandest miracle of 
the earth ; if words begin to faint when you speak of him, 
and all that can be said or thought looks cheap and low, 
compared with what he is ; then it is most certain that you 
are growing in purity ; for the growing enlargement of your 
apprehensions of Christ is the result of a growing purity, 
and will be also the cause of a purity more perfect still. 

And now, my brethren, I have many things to say, bu t 
I only ask whether you perceive, by signs like these, that 
you are growing pure? That you believe yourselves to bo 
disciples we know, — that is easy ; but I ask you here seri- 
ously, before God, whether you find that your religion haa 
any purifying power ? Is it a baptism ? Is it a finer's 
fire? Does it move you to cry, — Create in me a clean 
heart, 0, God? True piety, brethren, is a power, and 
purity is the result; — a result, as I have shown you, that 
may be indefinitely realized, even here on earth. Is it 
realized in you by the signs I have named? You hope 
in Christ that you shall be with him, and see him as he is. 
0, it is well, the most elevating hope, the most inspiring 
and celestial thought, which ever fell into the soul of a 
mortal ! I only ask if you see in your life, in the practi- 
cal bent of your works, that this hope has verity enough 
in you to take hold of your springs of action, and bring 
you into a true endeavor after Christ's purity ? What an 
opinion then will you be seen to have of the soul when 



THE LOST PURITY RESTORED. 281 

yon are living for its purity ! And then, wliat sublimity 
is there to your eye in that state of glory, in which your 
soul practically dwelleth among its kindred spirits, pure 
as they, and all as Christ is pure. These are they that 
have washed their robes and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb. 

But how little signifies this discourse of purity to very 
many of my hearers! I well understand the vacant, 
dreamy sound of such discourses before the concep- 
tion of purity, and the sense of it gotten out of the want, 
and out of Christ the supply, is opened to the soul. What 
is there so great in purity? who, that is untouched by 
God's gracious quickening, cares enough for purity to give 
the word an earnest significance ? It has, of course, no 
greatness to us, because the fact itself is a lost fact. We 
can not think it, because it is really gone out of the 
mind's reach and knowledge. But, 0, when once the 
heart feels a touch of its divinity, then a yearning is 
wakened, then the greatest and sublimest thing for a 
mortal is the unmixed life ! a soul established in the 
eternal chastity of truth and goodness ! 0, God ! who of 
this people shall ever know what it is ? I can not tell 
them ; thou alone canst breathe into them, and set in their 
living apprehension a truth so impossible for any mere 
words to express ! 

This only I can testify, as God has given me words, 
(and I pray God to show you their meaning.) that the 
heaven we are sent here to prepare, is a most pure 
world, open only to the pure; — And there shall, in no- 
wise, enter into it any tiling that defileth, neither whatso- 
ever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, but they that 
are written in the Lamb's book of life. 

24* 



XV. 



LIVING TO GOD IK SMALL THINGS. 

Luke xvi. 10. — "He that is faithful in that which is least, 
is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is 
unjust also in much." 

A readiness to do some great thing is not peculiar to 
Naaman the Syrian. There are many Christians who can 
never find a place large enough to do their duty. They 
must needs strain after great changes, and their works 
must utter themselves by a loud report. Any reform in 
society, short of a revolution, any improvement in charac- 
ter, less radical than that of conversion, is too faint a work, 
in their view, to be much valued. Xor is. it merely am- 
bition, but often it is a truly christian zeal, guarded by 
no sufficient views of the less imposing matters of life, 
which betrays men into such impressions. If there be 
any thing, in fact, wherein the views of Grod and the im- 
pressions of men are apt to be at total variance, it is in 
respect to the solemnity and importance of ordinary duties. 
The hurtfulness of mistake here, is of course very great. 
Trying always to do great things, to have extraordinary 
occasions every day, or to produce extraordinary changes, 
when small ones are quite as much needed, ends, of course, 
in defeat and dissipation. It produces a sort of religicn in 
the gross, which is no religion in particular. My text 
leads me to speak — 



LIVING TO GOD. 283 

Of the importance of living to God on common occasions 
omd in small things. 

He that is faithful in that which is least, saj^s the Saviour 
is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least, 
is imj ust also in much. This was a favorite sentiment with 
him. In his sermon on the mount, it was thus expressed— 
Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least 
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called 
the least in the kingdom of heaven ; but whosoever shall 
do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the 
kingdom of heaven. And when he rebuked the Pharisees, 
in their tything of mint, anise, and cummin, he was care- 
ful to speak very guardedly — These things ought ye to 
have done, and not to leave the other undone. It will 
instruct us in prosecuting this subject — 

1. To notice how little we know concerning the relative 
importance of events and duties. We use the terms great 
and small in speaking of actions, occasions, plans, and du- 
ties, only in reference to the mere outward look and first 
impression. Some of the most latent agents and mean 
looking substances in nature, are yet the most operative; 
but yet, when we speak of natural objects, we call them 
great or small, not according to their operativeness, but- 
according to size, count, report, or show. So it comes to 
pass, when we are classing actions, duties, or occasions, 
that we call a certain class great and another small, when 
really the latter are many fold more important and influ- 
ential than the former. We may suppose, for illustration, 
two transactions in business, as different in their nominal 
amount as a million of dollars and a single dollar. The 
former we call a large transaction, the latter a small one, 



284. LIVING TO GOD 

But God might reverse these terms. He would have no 
such thought as the counting of dollars. He would look, 
first of all, at the principle involved in the two cases. And 
here he would discover, not unlikely, that the nominally 
small one, owing to the nature of the transaction, or to the 
humble condition of the parties, or to their peculiar tem- 
per and disposition, took a deeper hold of their being, and 
did more to settle or unsettle great and everlasting princi- 
ple, than the other. Next, perhaps, he would look at the 
consequences of the two transactions, as developed in the 
great future; and here he would perhaps discover that 
the one which seems to us the smaller, is the hinge ol 
vastly greater consequences than the other. If the dollars 
had been sands of dust, they would not have had less 
weight in the divine judgment. 

We are generally ignorant of the real significance of 
events, which we think we understand. Almost every 
person can recollect one or more instances, where the whole 
after-current of his life was turned by some single word, 
or some incident so trivial as scarcely to fix his notice at 
the time. On the other hand, many great crises of danger, 
many high and stirring occasions, in which, at the time, 
his total being was absorbed, have passed by, leaving no 
trace of effect on his permanent interests, and are well 
nigh vanished from, his memory. The conversation of the 
stage-coach is often preparing results, which the solemn 
assembly and the most imposing and eloquent rites will 
fail to produce. What countryman, knowing the dairy- 
man's daughter, could have suspected that she was living 
to a mightier purpose and result, than almost any person 
m the church of God, however eminent? The outward 
of occasions and duties is, in fact, almost no index of their 



IN SMALL THINGS. 285 

importance; and our judgments concerning what is great 
and small, are without any certain validity. These terms 
as we use them, are, in fact, only words of outward de- 
scription, not words of definite measurement. 

2. It is to be observed, that even as the world judges 
small things constitute almost the whole of life. The 
great days of the year, for example, are few, and when 
they come, they seldom bring any thing great to us. And 
the matter of all common days is made up of little things, 
or ordinary and stale transactions. Scarcely once in a year 
does any thing really remarkable befall us. If I were to 
begin and give an inventory of the things you do in any 
single day, your muscular motions, each of which is accom- 
plished by a separate act of will, the objects you see, the 
words you utter, the contrivances you frame, your thoughts, 
passions, gratifications, and trials, many of you would not 
be able to hear it recited with sobriety. But three hun- 
dred and sixty-five such days make up a year, and a year 
is a twentieth, fiftieth, or seventieth part of your life. 
And thus, with the exception of some few striking pass- 
ages, or great and critical occasions, perhaps not more than 
five or six in all, your life is made up of common, and as 
men are wont to judge, unimportant things. But yet, at 
the end, you have done up an amazing work, and fixed 
an amazing result. You stand at the bar of God, and 
look back on a life made up of small things — but yet a 
life, how momentous, for good or evil ! 

3. It very much exalts, as well as sanctions, the view I 
am advancing, that God is so observant ol small things. 
He upholds the sparrow's wing, clothes the lily with his 
own beautifying hand, and numbers the hairs of his child- 
ren He holds the balancings of the clouds. He maketh 



286 LIVING TO GOD 

small the drops of rain. It astonishes all thought to ob« 
serve the minuteness of God's government, and of the 
natural and common processes which he carries on from 
day to day. His dominions are spread out, system beyond 
system, system above system, filling all hight and lati- 
tude, but he is never lost in the vast or magnificent. lie 
descends to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe 
in the smallest things. He carries on a process of growth 
in every tree, and flower, and living thing ; accomplishes 
in each an N internal organization and works the functiona 
of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or in- 
strument to trace. He articulates the members and im- 
pels the instincts of every living mote that shines in the 
sunbeam. As when we ascend toward the distant and the 
vast so when we descend toward the minute, we see his 
attention acuminated, and his skill concentrated on his ob- 
ject; and the last discernible particle dies out of our sight 
with the same divine glory on it, as on the last orb that 
glimmers in the skirt of the universe. God is as careful 
to finish the mote as the planet, both because it consists 
only with his perfection to finish every thing, and because 
the perfection of his greatest structures is the result of per- 
fection in their smallest parts or particles. On this patience 
of detail rests all the glory and order of the created uni- 
verse, spiritual and material. God could thunder the yeai 
round ; he could shake the ribs of the world with perpet- 
ual earthquakes ; he could blaze on the air, and brush the 
affrighted mountains, each day with his comets. But if 
he could not feed the grass with his dew, and breath into 
the little lungs of his insect family; if he could not ex* 
pend his care on small things, and descend to an interest 
in their perfection, his works would be only crude and dis- 



IN SMALL THINGS. 287 

jointed machines, compounded of mistakes and malforma- 
tions, without beauty and order, and fitted to no perfect 
end. 

The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter 
illustration of the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast 
stretch and compass of the work of redemption, it i3 a 
work of the most humble detail in its style of execution. 
The Saviour could have preached a sermon on the mount 
every morning. Each night he could have stilled the sea, 
before his astonished disciples, and shown the conscious 
waves lulling into peace under his feet. He could ha\e 
transfigured himself before Pilate and the astonished mul- 
titudes of the temple. He could have made visible ascen- 
sions in the noon of every day, and revealed his form 
standing in the sun, like the angel of the apocalypse. But 
this was not his mind. The incidents of which his work 
is principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very hum- 
ble and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the 
world was never able, in any degree, to approach the Sa- 
viour, in the lowliness of his manner and his attention to 
humble things. His teachings were in retired places, and 
his illustrations drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger 
of faith touched him in the crowd, he knew the touch and 
distinguished also the faith. He reproved the ambitious 
housewifery of an humble woman. After he had healed 
a poor being, blind from his birth — a work transcending 
all but divine power — he returned and sought him out, aa 
the most humble Sabbath-school teacher might have done; 
and when he had found him, cast out and persecuted by 
men, he taught him privately the highest secrets of his 
Messiahship. "When the world around hung darkened in 
sympathy with his cross, and the earth was shaking with 



r> 



88 LIVING TO GOD 



inward amazement, lie himself was remembering his 
mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good son. 
And when he burst the bars of death, its first and final 
conquercr, he folded the linen clothes and the napkin, and 
laid them in order apart, showing that in the greatest 
things, he had a set purpose also concerning the smallest. 
And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ's 
redemption, like the created universe, is seen to be a 
vast orb of glory, wrought up out of finished particles, 
Now a life of great and prodigious exploits would have 
been comparatively an easy thing for him, but to cover 
himself with beauty and glory in small things, to fill and 
adorn every little human occasion, so as to make it divine, 
— this was a work of skill, which no mind or hand was 
equal to, but that which shaped the atoms of the world. 
Such everywhere is God. He nowhere overlooks or de- 
spises small things. 

4. It is a fact of history and of observation, that all 
efficient men, while they have been men of comprehension, 
have also been men of detail. I wish it were possible to 
produce as high an example of this two-fold character 
among the servants of God and benevolence in these times, 
as we have in that &evj prodigy of war and conquest, who, 
in the beginning of the present century, desolated Europe 
Napoleon was the most effective man in modern times — 
some will say of all times. The secret of his character 
was, that while his plans were more vast, more various, 
and. of course, more difficult than those of other men, he 
had the talent, at the same time, to fill them up with per- 
fect promptness and precision, in every particular of ex- 
ecution. His vast and daring plans would have been vis- 
ionary in any other man ; but with him every vision flew 



IN SMALL THINGS. 289 

out of his brain, a chariot of iron ; because it was filled 
rip, in all the particulars of execution, to be a solid and 
compact framework in every part. His armies were to- 
gether only one great engine of desolation, of which he 
was the head or brain. Numbers, spaces, times, were all 
distinct in his eye. The wheeling of every legion, how- 
ever remote, was mentally present to him. The tramp of 
every foot sounded in his ear. The numbers were always 
supplied, the spaces passed over, the times met, and so the 
work was done. The nearest moral approximation I think 
of, was Paul the apostle. Paul had great principles, great 
plans, and a great enthusiasm. He had the art, at the 
same time, to bring his great principles into a powerful 
application to his own conduct, and to all the common 
affairs of all the disciples in his churches. He detected 
every want, understood every character ; set his guards 
against those whom he distrusted ; kept all his work turn- 
ing in a motion of discipline ; prompted to every duty. 
You will find his epistles distinguished by great princi- 
ples; and, at the same time, by a various and circumstan- 
tial attention to all the common affairs of life ; and, in 
that, you have the secret of his efficiency. There must be 
detail in every great work. It is an element of effective- 
ness, which no reach of plan, no enthusiasm of purpose, 
can dispense with. Thus, if a man conceives the idea of 
becoming eminent in learning, but cannot toil through the 
million of little drudgeries necessary to carry him on, hia 
learning will be soon told. Or, if a man undertakes to be- 
come rich, but despises the small and gradual advances by 
which wealth is ordinarily accumulated, his expectations 
will, of course, be the sum of his riches. Accurate and 
careful detail, the minding of common occasions and small 

2S 



290 LIVING TO GOB 

tilings, combined with general scope and vigor, is tLe se- 
cret of all the efficiency and success in the world. God 
has so ordered things, that great and sudden leaps are sel- 
dom observable. Every advance in the general must be 
made by advances in particular. The trees and the corn 
do not leap out suddenly into maturity, but they climb 
upward, by little and little, and after the minutest possible 
increment. The orbs of heaven, too, accomplish their cir- 
cles not by one or two extraordinary starts or springs, but 
by traveling on through paces and roods of the sky. It 
is thus, and only thus, that any disciple will become effi- 
cient in the service of his Master. He can not do up his 
works of usefulness by the prodigious stir and commotion 
of a few extraordinary occasions. Laying down great 
plans, he must accomplish them by great industry, by 
minute attentions, by saving small advances, by working 
out his way as God shall assist him. 

5. It is to be observed, that there is more of real piety 
in adorning one small than one great occasion. This may 
seem paradoxical, but what I intend will be seen by one 
or two illustrations. I have spoken of the minuteness of 
God's works. When I regard the eternal God as engaged 
in polishing an atom, or elaborating the functions of a 
mote invisible to the eye, what evidence do I there receive 
of his desire to perfect his works! No gross and mighty 
world, however plausibly shaped, would yield a hundredth 
part the intensity of evidence. An illustration from hu- 
man things will present a closer parallel. It is perfectly 
well understood, or if not, it should be, that almost any 
husband would leap into the sea, or rush into a burning 
edifice to rescue a perishing wife. But to anticipate the 
convenience or happiness of a wife in some small matter, 



IN SMALL THINGS. 293 

the neglect of which would be "unobserved, is a more elo- 
quent proof of tenderness. This shows a mindful fond- 
ness, which wants occasions in which to express itself, 
And the smaller the occasion seized upon, the more in- 
tensely affectionate is the attention paid. Piety to\* ard 
God may be well tested or measured, in the same way. 
Peter found no difficulty in drawing his sword and fight- 
ing for his Master, even at the hazard of his life, though 
but an hour or less afterward he forsook him and denied 
him. His valor on that great and exciting occasion was 
no proof of his piety. But when the gentle Mary came, 
with her box of ointment, and poured it on the Saviour's 
head — an act which satisfied no want, met no exigency, 
and was of no use, except as a gratuitous and studied proof 
of her attachment to Jesus, he marks it as an eminent ex- 
ample of piety; saying — Verily I say unto you where- 
soever this gospel shall be preached in the world, there 
also shall this, that this woman hath clone, be told for a 
memorial of her. 

My brethren, this piety which is faithful in that which 
is least, is really a more difficult piety than that which 
triumphs and glares on high occasions. Our judgments 
are apt to be dazzled by a vain admiration of the more 
public attempts and the more imposing manifestations of 
occasional zeal. It requires less piety, I verily believe, to 
be a martyr for Christ, than it does to love a powerless 
enemy; or to look upon the success of a rival withoui 
envy ; or even to maintain a perfect and guileless integrity 
in the common transactions of life. Precisely this, in fact, 
is the lesson which history teaches. How many, alas! of 
those who have died in the manner of martyrdom, mani- 
festly sought that distinction, and brought it on themselves 



292 LIVING TO GOD 

by instigation of a mere fanatical ambition 1 Such facts 
seem designed to show us that the common spheres of life 
and business, the small matters of the street, the shop, the 
hearth, and the table, are more genial to true piety, than 
any artificial extraordinary scenes of a more imposing de- 
scription. Excitement, ambition, a thousand questionable 
causes, may elevate us occasionally to great attempts ; but 
they will never lead us into the more humble duties of 
constancy and godly industry ; or teach us to adorn the 
unpretending spheres of life with a heavenly spirit. We 
love to do great things ; our natural pride would be greatly 
pleased, if God had made the sky taller, the world larger, 
and given us a more royal style of life and duty. But he 
understands us well. His purpose is to heal our infirmity; 
and with this very intent, I am persuaded, he has ordained 
these humble spheres of action, so that no ostentation, no 
great and striking explosions of godliness shall tempt our 
heart. And in the same way, his word declares, that be- 
stowing all one's goods to feed the poor, or giving one's body 
to be burned, and, of consequence, that great speeches and 
donations, that a mighty zeal for reform, that a prodigious 
jealousy for sound doctrine, without something better — 
without charity, profiteth nothing. And the picture of 
charity is humble enough ; — It suffereth long and is kind, 
envieth not, v r aunteth not itself; is not puffed up. doth not 
behave itself unseemly ; seeketh not her own, is not easily 
provoked, thinketh no evil, beareth all things, believeth 
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 

6, The importance of living to God, in ordinary and 
email things, is seen, in the fact that character, which is 
the end of religion, is in its very nature a growth. Con- 
version is a great change ; old tilings are passed away ; 



IN SMALL THINGS. 293 

behold all things are become new. This however is the 
language of a hope or confidence, somewhat prophetic, ex- 
ulting, at the beginning, in the realization df future victory. 
The young disciple, certainly, is far enough from a con- 
sciousness of complete deliverance from sin. In that re* 
spect, his work is but just begun. He is now in the blade; 
we shall see him next in the ear ; and after that, he will 
ripen to the full corn in the ear. His character, as a man 
and a Christian, is to accomplish its stature by growing. 
And all the offices of life, domestic, social, civil, useful, 
are contrived of God to be the soil, as Christ is the sun, 
of such a growth. All the cares, wants, labors, dangers, 
accidents, intercourses of life, are adjusted for the very 
purpose of exercising and ripening character. They are 
precisely adapted for this end, by Gccl's all-perfect wisdom. 
This, in fact, is the grand philosophy of the structure of 
all things. And, accordingly,, there never has been a 
great and beautiful character, which has not become so by 
filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed of 
God. 

The wonderful fortunes of Joseph seem, at first, to have 
fallen suddenly upon him, and altogether by a miracle. 
But a closer attention to his history will show ycu that he 
rose only by a gradual progress, and by the natural power 
of his virtues. The astonishing art he had of winning the 
confidence of others had, after all, no magic in it save the 
magic of goodness ; and God assisted him, only as he as- 
sists other good men. The growth of his fortunes was 
the shadow only of his growth in character. "By his assi- 
duity, he made every tiling prosper ; and by his good faith, 
he won the confidence, first of Potiphar, then of the keeper 
of the prison, then of Pharaoh himself. And so he grew 

25* 



294 LIVING TO GOD 

up gently and silently till the helm of the Egyptian king- 
dom was found in his hand. 

Peter, too, after he had flourished so vaunting! v with 
his sword, entered on a growing and faithful life. From 
an ignorant fisherman, he became a skillful writer, a fin- 
ished Christian, and a teacher of faithful living, in the 
common offices of life. He occupied his great apostleship 
in exhorting subjects to obey the ordinances of governors 
for the Lord's sake; servants to be subject to their mas- 
ters ; wives to study such a carriage as would win their 
unbelieving husbands ; and husbands to give honor to the 
wife, as being heirs together of the grace of life. But in a 
manner to comprehend every thing good, he said : — Giving 
all diligence (this is the true notion of Christian excel- 
lence) — giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to vir- 
tue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance 
patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kind- 
ness, and to brotherly kindness charity. The impression 
is unavoidable, that he now regarded religion, not as a 
sword fight, but as a growth of holy character, kept up 
by all diligence in the walks of life. 

Every good example in the word of God, is an illustra- 
tion of the same truth. To finish a character on a sudden, 
or by any but ordinary duties, carefully and piously done, 
by a mere religion of Sundays and birth-days, and revi- 
vals and contributions, and orthodoxies, and public re* 
forms, is nowhere undertaken. They watered the plant 
in secret, trained it up at family altars, strengthened it in 
the exposures of business, till it became a beautiful and 
heavenly growth, and ready, with all its blooming fruit, 
to adorn the paradise of God. 

It ought also to be noticed, under this head, that all the 



IN SMALL THINGS. 295 

mischiefs which, befall Christian character and destroy its 
growth, are such as lie in the ordinary humble duties of 
life. Christians do not fall back into declension or dis- 
graceful apostacy on a sudden, or by the overcoming pow- 
er of great and strange temptations. They are stolen away 
rather by little and little, and almost insensibly to them- 
selves, They commonly fall into some lightness of car- 
riage ;--some irritation of temper in their family or business ; 
some neglect of duty to children, apprentices, or friends ; 
some artfulness; some fault of integrity in business. 
These are the beginnings of evil. At length they grow a 
little more remiss. They begin to slight their secret duties. 
The world and its fashions become more powerful, and 
they yield a little farther ; till at length they are utterly 
fallen from the spirit and standing of Christians. And 
thus, you perceive that all the dangers which beset our 
piety, lie in the humble and ordinary matters of life. 
Here then is the place where religion must make her con- 
quests. Here she must build her barriers and take her 
stand. And if it be a matter of consequence that the peo- 
ple of God should live constant and godly lives ; that they 
should grow in the strength of their principles, and the 
beauty of their example; that the church should clear 
herself of all reproach, and stand invested with honor in 
the sight of all mankind, — if this be important, so im- 
portant is it that we live well in small tilings, and adorn 
the common incidents of life with a heavenly temper and 
•practice. Religion must forever be unstable, the peo- 
ple of Christ must foil into declension and disgrace, if it 
be not understood that here is the true field of the Chris* 
tian life. 

These illustrations of the importance of living to God 



296 LIVING TO GOD 

in ordinary and common things might be carried to almost 
any extent; but I will arrest the subject here, and pro- 
ceed to suggest some applications which may be useful. 

1, Private Christians are here instructed in the true 
method of Christian progress and usefulness. It is a first 
truth with you all, I doubt not, Irethren, that divine aid 
and intercourse are your only strength and reliance. You 
know, too well, the infirmity of your best purposes and 
endeavors, to hope for any thing but defeat, without the 
Spirit of God dwelling in you and superintending youi 
warfare. In what manner you may secure this divine in- 
dwelling permanently is here made plain. It is not by 
attempts above your capacity, or by the invention of great 
and extraordinary occasions ; but it is by living unto God 
daily. If 3 r ou feel the necessity of making spiritual at- 
tainments, or growing in holiness ; if you think as little 
of mere starts and explosions in religious zeal as they de- 
serve, and as much of growths, habits, and purified affec- 
tions as God does, you will have a delightful work to 
prosecute in the midst of all your ordinary cares and em- 
ployments, and you will have the inward witness of divine 
communion ever vouchsafed jou. The sins, by which 
God's Spirit is ordinarily grieved, are the sins of small 
things — laxities in keeping the temper, slight neglects of 
duty, lightness, sharpness of dealing. If it is your habit 
to walk with God in the humblest occupations of you* 
days, it is very nearly certain that you will be filled with 
the Spirit always. 

If it be a question with you, how to overcome bad and 
pernicious habits, the mode is here before you. The rea- 
son why those who are converted to Christ, often make so 



IN SMALL THINGS. 297 

poor a work of rectifying their old habits, is that they lay 
down their work in the very places where it needs to be 
prosecuted most carefully, that is, in their common em- 
ployments. They do not live to God in that which is 
least. They reserve their piety for those exercises, public 
and private, which are immediately religious, and so a 
wide door is left open in all the common duties of life for 
their old habits to break in and take them captive. As if 
it were enough, in shutting out a flood, to dike the higher 
points of the ground and leave the lower ! 

If the question be, in what manner you may grow in 
knowledge and intellectual strength, the answer is readily 
given. You can do it by no means save that of pertina- 
cious, untiring application. ISTo one becomes a Christian 
who can not by the cultivation of thought, and by acquir- 
ing a well-discriminated knowledge of the scriptures, make 
himself a gift of four fold, and perhaps even an hundred 
fold value to the church. This he can do by industry, by 
improving small opportunities, and, not least, by endeav- 
oring to realize the principles and the beauty of Christ in 
all his daily conduct. In this point of view, religion ia 
cultivation itself, and that of the noblest kind. And 
never does it truly justify its nature, except when it is 
seen elevating the mind, the manners, the whole moral 
dignity of the subject. 

AVhy is it that a certain class of men, who never thrust 
themselves on public observation, by any very signal acts, 
do yet attain to a very commanding influence, and leave a 
deep and lasting impression on the world ? They are the 
men who thrive by constancy and by means of small ad- 
vances, just as others do who thrive in wealth. They live 
to God in the common doings of their daily life, as well 



298 LIVING TO GOD 

as in the more extraordinary transactions, in which they 
mingle. In this way, they show themselves to be actua- 
ted by good principle, not from respect to the occasions 
where it may be manifested, but from respect to principle 
itself. And their carefulness to honor God in humble 
tilings, is stronger proof to men of their uprightness, than 
the most distinguished acts or sacrifices. Such persons 
operate principally by the weight of confidence and moral 
respect they acquire, which is the most legitimate and 
powerful action in the world. At first, it is not felt, be- 
cause it is noiseless, and is not thoroughly appreciated. 
It is action without pretense, without attack, and therefore, 
perhaps, without notice for a time. But by degrees the 
personal motives begin to be understood, and the beauty 
and moral dignity of the life are felt. No proclamation 
of an aim or purpose has, in the mean time, gone before 
the disciple to awaken suspicion or start opposition. The 
simple power of his goodness and uprightness flows out 
as an emanation on all around him. He shines like the 
sun, not because he purposes to shine, but because he is 
full of light. The bad man is rebuked, the good man 
strengthened by his example ; every thing evil and un- 
graceful is ashamed before him, every thing right and 
lovely is made stronger and lovelier. And now, if he has 
the talent to undertake some great enterprise of reform or 
of benevolence, in the name of his Master, he has some- 
thing already prepared in the good opinions of mankind, 
to soften or neutralize the pretense of such attempts, and 
give him favor in them. Or, if a Christian of this stamp 
has not the talents or standing necessary to lead in the 
more active forms of enterprise, he will yet accom- 
plish a high and noble purpose in his life. The silent 



IN SMALL THINGS. 299 

savor of his name may, perhaps, do more good after he 
is laid in his grave, than abler men do by the most active 
efforts. 

I often hear mentioned, by the Christians of our city, 
the name of a certain godly man, who has been dead 
many years ; and he is always spoken of with so much 
respectfulness and affection, that I, a stranger of another 
generation, feel his power, and the sound of his name re- 
freshes me. That man was one who lived to God in small 
things. I know this, not by any description which has 
thus set forth his character, but from the very respect and 
homage with which he is named. Virtually, he still lives 
among us, and the face of his goodness shines upon all our 
Christian labors. And is it not a delightful aspect of the 
Christian faith, that it opens so sure a prospect of doing 
good, on all who are in humble condition, or whose talents 
are too feeble to act in the more public spheres of enter- 
prise and duty ? Such are called to act by their simple 
goodness more than others are ; and who has not felt the 
possibility that such, when faithful, do actually discharge 
a calling, the more exalted, because of its unmixed nature ? 
If there were none of these unpretending but beautiful 
examples, blooming in depression, sweetening affliction by 
their Christian patience, adorning poverty by their high 
integrity, and dying in the Christian heroism of faith, — if, 
I say, there were no such examples making their latent 
impressions in the public mind, of the dignity and truth 
of the gospel, who shall prove that our great men, who 
are supposed to accomplish so much by their eloquence, 
iheir notable sacrifices and far-reaching plans, would not 
utterly fail in them ? However this may be, we have rea- 
son enough, all of us, for living to God in every sphere of 



800 LIVING TO GOD 

life. Blessed are tliey that keep judgment, and he that 
doeth righteousness at all times. 

2. Our subject enables us to offer some useful sugges- 
tions, concerning the manner in which churches may be 
made to prosper. 

First of all, brethren, you will have a care to maintain 
your purity and your honor, by the exercise of a sound 
discipline. And here you will be faithful in that which is 
least. You will not wait until a crisis comes, or a flagrant 
case arises, where the hand of extermination is needed. 
That is often a very cruel discipline, rather than one of 
brotherly love. Nothing, of course, should be done in a 
meddlesome spirit; for this would be more mischievous 
than neglect. But small things will yet be watched, the 
first gentle declinings noted and faithfully but kindly re- 
proved. Your church should be like a family, not waiting 
till the ruin of a member is complete and irremediable^ 
but acting preventively. This would be a healthy disci- 
pline, and it is the only sort, I am persuaded, on which 
God will ever smile. 

The same spirit of watchfulness and attention is neces- 
ary to all the solid interests of your church. It is not 
enough that you attempt to bless it occasionally by some 
act of generosity or some fit of exertion. Your brethren, 
suffering from injustice or evil report, must have your 
faithful sympathy ; such as are struggling with adversity 
must have your aid ; when it is possible, the more humble 
and private exercises of your church must be attended. 

The impression can not be too deeply fixed, that a 
church must grow chiefly by its industry and the personal 
growth of its members. Some churches seem to feel that, 



IJST SMALL THINGS. 301 

if any tiling is to be done, some great operation must be 
started. They can not even repent without concert and a 
general ado. Have yon not the preaching of God's word, 
fifty -two sabbaths in the year? Have you not also 
families, friendships, interchanges of business, meetings 
for prayer, brotherly vows, opportunities of private and 
public charity? Do not despise these common occa- 
sions — God has not planned the world badly. Christ did 
not want higher occasions than the Father gave him. The 
grand maxim of his mission was, that the humblest spheres 
give the greatest weight and dignity to principles — He was 
the good carpenter, saving the world! Eightly viewed, 
my brethren, there are no small occasions in this world, 
as in our haste we too often think. Great principles, prin- 
ciples sacred even to God, are at stake in every moment 
of life. What we want, therefore, is not invention, but 
industry ; not the advantages of new and extraordinary 
times, but the realizing of our principles by adorning 
the doctrine of God our Saviour in all times. 

One of the best securities for the growth a nd prosperity 
of a church, is to be sought in a faithful exhibition of re- 
ligion in families. Here is a law of increase, which God 
has incorporated in his church, and by which he designs 
to give it strength and encouragement. But why is it — I 
ask the question with grief and pain — why is it that so 
many children, so many apprentices and servants are seen 
to grow up, or to live many years in Christian families, 
without any regard, or even respect for religion? It is 
because their parents, guardians, or masters have that sort 
of piety which can flourish only like Peter's sword, on 
great occasions. Then, perhaps, they are exceedingly full 
of piety, and put forth many awkward efforts to do good 

26 



302 LIVING TO GOD 

in their families ; enough, it may be, to give them a per- 
manent disgust for religious things. But when the great 
occasion is past, their work is done up. A spirit of world- 
!lness now rolls in again, a want of conscience begins to 
appear, a light and carnal conversation to show itsel£ 
Che preaching of the gospel is very critically, and some- 
what wittily canvassed on the Sabbath. The day itself 
m the mean time, fares scarcely better than the preacher. 
It is shortened by degrees at both ends, and again by a 
newspaper or some trifling conversation, in the middle. 
There is no instructive remark at the family prayers, and 
perhaps no family instruction anywhere. There is no 
effort to point the rising family toward a better world, and 
apparently no living for such a world. Bad tempers are 
manifested in government and in business. Arts are prac- 
ticed below dignity and wide of integrity. How is it 
possible that the children and youth of a family should 
not learn to despise such a religion? How different would 
be the result, if there were a simple unostentatious piety 
kept up with constancy, and the fear of Grod were seen to 
be a controlling principle, in all the daily conduct and 
plans of life ! I have heard of many striking cases of 
conversion, which were produced, under God, by simply 
seeing the godly life of a Christian in his family without 
a word of direct address, and in a time of general inatten- 
tion to religious things. In such a family every child and 
inmate will certainly respect religion. And the church, in 
fact, may count on receiving a constant and certain flow 
of increase from the bosom of such families. 

I will not pursue this head farther. But feel assured of 
this, brethren, that an every-day religion ; one that loves 
the duties of our common walk ; one that makes an hon- 



IN SMALL THINGS. 303 

est man ; one that accomplishes an intellectual and moral 
growth in the subject ; one that works in all weather, and 
improves all opportunities, will best, and most healthily 
promote the growth of a church, and the power of the 
gospel. God prescribes our duty ; and it were wrong not 
to believe that if we undertake God's real work, he will 
furnish us to it, and give us pleasure in it. He will trans- 
fuse into us some portion of his own versatility ; he will 
attract us into a nicer observation of his wisdom in our 
humble duties and concerns. "We shall more admire the 
healthiness of that which grows up in God's natural spring- 
time^ and ripens in the air of his common days. The 
ordinary will thus grow dignified and sacred in our sight ; 
and without discarding all invention in respect to means 
and opportunities, we shall yet especially love the daily 
bread of a common grace, in our common works and cares. 
And all the more that it was the taste of our blessed Mas- 
ter, to make the ordinary glow with mercy and goodness. 
Him we are to follow. We are to work after no set fashioE 
of high endeavor, but to walk with him, performing as it 
were, a ministry on foot, that we may stop at the humblest 
matters and prove our fidelity there. 



I 



XVI. 

THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

Heb. vii. 16. — Who is made, not after the law of a carnal 
commandment, but after the power of an endless life. 

This word after is a word of correspondence, and im- 
plies two subjects brought in comparison. That Christ 
has the power of an endless life in his own person is cer- 
tainly true ; but to say that he is made a priest after this 
power subjective in himself, is awkward even to a degree 
that violates the natural grammar of speech. The sugges- 
tion is different ; viz., that the priesthood of Christ is grad- 
uated by the wants and measures of the human soul as 
the priesthood of the law was not ; that the endless life in 
which he comes, matches and measures the endless life in 
mankind whose fall he is to restore ; providing a salvation 
as strong as their sin, and as long or lasting as the run of 
their immortality. He is able thus to save unto the utter- 
most. Powers of endless life though we be, falling prin- 
cipalities, wandering stars shooting downward in the pre- 
cipitation of evil, he is able to bring us off, re-establish our 
dismantled eternities, and set us in the peace and confidence 
of an eternal righteousness. 

I propose to exhibit the work of Christ in this high 
relation, which will lead me to consider — 

I. The power of an endless life in man, what it is, and, as 
being under sin, requires. 

II. What Christy in his eternal priesthood, does to restore it 



THE POWER OF A^ ENDLESS LIFE. 805 

1. The power of an endless life, what it is and requires. 

The greatness of our immortality, as commonly handled, 
is one of the dullest subjects, partly because it finds appre- 
hension asleep in us, and partly because the strained com- 
putations entered into, and the words piled up as magni- 
fiers, in a way of impressing the sense of its eternal dura- 
tion, carry no impression, start no sense of magnitude in 
us. Even if we raise no doubt or objection, they do little 
more than drum us to sleep in our own nothingness. "We 
exist here only in the germ, and it is much as if the life 
power in some seed, that, for example, of the great cedars 
of the west, were to begin a magnifying of its own import- 
ance to itself in the fact that it has so long a time to live ; 
and finally, because of the tiny figure it makes, and be- 
cause the forces it contains are as yet unrealized, to settle 
inertly down upon the feeling that, after all, it is only a 
seed, a dull, insignificant speck of matter, wanting to be a 
little greater than it can. Instead, then, of attempting to 
magnify the soul by any formal computation on the score 
of time or duration, let us simply take up and follow the 
hint that is given us in this brief expression, the powei 
of an endless life. 

It is a power, a power of life, a power of endless life. 

The word translated power in the text, is the original of 
our word dynamic, denoting a certain impetus, momentum, 
or causative force, which is cumulative, growing stronger 
and more impelling as it goes. And this is the nature of 
life or vital force universally, — it is a force cumulative aa 
long as it continues. It enters into matter as a building, 
organizing, lifting power, and knows not how to stop till 
death stops it. We use the word grow to describe its 
action, and it does not even know how to subsist without 

26* 



806 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

growth. In which, growth it lays hold continual] y of new 
material, expands in volume, and fills a larger sphere of 
body with its power. 

Now these innumerable lives, animal and vegetable, at 
work upon the world, creating and new-creating, and pro- 
ducing their immense transformations of matter, are all 
immaterial forces or powers; related, in that manner, to 
souls, which are only a highest class of powers. The 
human soul can not be more efficiently described than by 
calling it the power of an endless life ; and to it all these 
lower immaterialities, at work in matter, look up as mute 
prophets, testifying, by the magical sovereignty they wield 
in the processes and material transformations of growth, 
to the possible forces embodied in that highest, noblest 
form of life. And sometimes, since our spiritual nature, 
taken as a power of life, organizes nothing material and 
external by which its action is made visible, God allows 
the inferior lives in given examples, especially of the tree 
species, to have a small eternity of growth, and lift their 
giant forms to the clouds, that we may stand lost in amaze- 
ment before the majesty of that silent power that works 
in life, when many centuries only are given to be the lease 
of its activity. The work is slow, the cumulative process 
silent, — viewed externally, nothing appears that we 
name force, and yet this living creature called a tree, 
throbs internally in fullness of life, circulates its juices, 
swells in volume, towers in majesty; till finally it gires 
to the very word life a historic presence and sublimity. 
It begins with a mere seed or germ, a tiny speck so inert 
and frail that we might even laugh at the bare suggestion 
of power in such a look of nothingness ; just as at our pres- 
ent point of dullness and weakness, we can give no sound of 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 307 

meaning to any thing said of our own spiritual greatness, 
and yet that seed, long centuries ago, when the tremendous 
babyhood of Mahomet was nursing at his mother's breast, 
sprouted apace, gathered to itself new circles of matter, 
year by year and age after age, kept its pumps in play } 
sent up new supplies of food, piling length on length in 
the sky, conserving still and vitalizing all ; and now it 
stands entire in pillared majesty, mounting upward still, and 
tossing back the storms that break on its green pinnacles, 
a bulk immense, such as being felled and hollowed would 
even make a modern ship of war. 

And yet these cumulative powers of vegetable life are 
only feeble types of that higher, fearfully vaster power, 
that pertains to the endless life of a soul — that power that 
known or unknown dwells in you and in me. What Abel 
now is, or Enoch, as an angel of God, in the volume of 
his endless life and the vast energies unfolded in his growth 
by the river of God, they may set you trying to guess, 
but can by no means help you adequately to conceive. 
The possible majestj^ to which any free intelligence of God 
may grow, in the endless increment of ages, is after all 
rather hinted than imaged in their merely vegetable 
grandeur. 

Quickened by these analogies, let us pass directly to the 
Boul or spiritual nature itself, as a power of endless growth 
or increment; for it is only in this way that we begin to 
conceive the real magnitude and majesty of the soul, and 
not by any mere computations based on its eternity or 
immortality. 

What it means, in this higher and nobler sense, to be a 
power of life, we are very commonly restrained from ob* 
serving by two or three considerations that require to be 



308 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 



named. First, when looking after the measures of the 
soul, we very naturally lay hold of what first occurs to 
us, and begin to busy ourselves in the contemplation of 
its eternal duration. Whereas the eternal duration of the 
soul, at any given measure, if we look no farther, is noth- 
ing but the eternal continuance of its mediocrity or com- 
parative littleness. Its eternal growth in volume and 
power is in that manner quite lost sight of, and the com- 
putation misses every thing most impressive, in its future 
significance and history. Secondly, the growth of the 
soul is a merely spiritual growth, indicated by no visible 
and material form that is expanded by it and with it as in 
the growth of a tree, and therefore passes comparatively 
unnoticed by many, just because they can not see it with 
their eyes. And then again, thirdly, as the human body 
attains to its maturity, and, finally, in the decays of age, be- 
comes an apparent limit to the spiritual powers and facul- 
ties, we drop into the impression that these have now 
passed their climacteric, and that we have actually seen 
the utmost volume it is in their nature ever to attain. 
We do not catch the significance of the fact that the soul 
outgrows the growth and outlives the vigor of the body, 
which is not true in trees; revealing its majestic properties 
as a force independent and qualifiedly sovereign. Ob- 
serving how long the soul-force goes on to expand after 
the body-force has reached its maximum, and when dis- 
ease and age have begun to shatter the frail house iJ 
inhabits, how long it braves these bodily decrepitudes, 
driving on, still on, like a strong engine in a poorly tim- 
bered vessel, through seas not too heavy for it, but only 
for the crazy hulk it impels, — observing this, and making 
due account of it, we should only be the more impressed 



THE POTVER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 309 

with a sense of some inherent everlasting power of growth 
and progress in its endless life. 

Stripping aside now all these impediments, let ns pass 
directly into the soul's history, and catch from what trans- 
pires in its first indications the sign or promise of what it 
is to become. In its beginning it is a mere seed cf possi- 
bility. All the infant faculties are folded up, at first, and 
scarceh a sign of power is visible in it. But a doom of 
growth is in it, and the hidden momentum of an endless 
power is driving it on. And a falling body will not gather 
momentum in its fall more naturally and certainly, than it 
will gather force, in the necessary struggle of its endless 
life now begun. TTe may think little of the increase ; it 
is a matter of course, and why should we take note of it? 
But if no increase or development appears, if the faculties 
all sleep as at the first, we take sad note of that, and draw 
how reluctantly, the conclusion that our child is an idiot 
and not a proper man! And what a chasm is there be 
tween the idiot and the man ; one a being unprogressive 
a being who is not a power ; the other a careering force 
started on its way to eternity, a principle of might and 
majesty begun to be unfolded, and to be progressively 
unfolded forever. Intelligence, reason, conscience, ob- 
servation, choice, memory, enthusiasm, all the fires of his 
inborn eternity are kindling to a glow, and, looking on 
him as a force immortal, just beginning to reveal the 
symptoms of what he shall be, we call him man. Only a 
few years ago he lay in his cradle, a barely breathing prin- 
ciple of life, but in that life were gathered up, as in a germ 
or seed, all these godlike powers that are now so conspic* 
uous in the volume of his personal growth. In a sense, 
all that is in him now was in him then, as the power of an 



810 THE POWEK OF AK ENDLESS LIEE. 

endless life, and still the sublime progression of his power 
is only begun. He conquers now the sea and its storms 
He climbs the heavens, and searches out the mysteries oi 
the stars. He harnesses the lightning. He bids the rocks 
dissolve, and summons the secret atoms to give up theii 
names and laws. He subdues the face or the world, and 
compels the forces of the waters and the fires to be his 
servants. He makes laws, hurls empires down upon em- 
pires in the fields of war, speaks words that can not die, 
sings to distant realms and peoples across vast ages of 
time ; in a word, he executes all that is included in history, 
showing his tremendous energy in almost every thing that 
stirs the silence and changes the conditions of the world. 
Every thing is transformed by him even up to the stars. 
Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, 
and seasons of the world, have done as much to revolu- 
tionize the world as he, the power of an endless life, has 
done since the clay he came forth upon it, and received, as 
he is most truly declared to have done, dominion over it. 
And yet we have, in the power thus developed, nothing 
more than a mere hint or initial sign of what is to be the 
real stature of his personality in the process of his ever- 
lasting development. We exist here only in the small, 
that God may have us in a state of flexibility, and bend 
or fashion us, at the best advantage, to the model of his 
own great life and character. And most of us, therefore, 
have scarcely a conception of the exceeding weight of 
glory to be comprehended in our existence. If we take, for 
example, the faculty of memory, how very obvious is it 
that as we pass eternally on, we shall have more and more 
to remember, and finally shall Lave gathered in more into 
this great storehouse of the soul, than is now contained in 



THE FOSTER C f A2s ENDLESS LIFE. 311 

all the libraries of the world. And there is not one of 
our faculties that has not, in its volume, a similar powei 
of expansion. Indeed, if it were not so, the memory 
would finally overflow and drown all our other faculties, 
and the spirits, instead of being powers, would virtually 
cease to be any thing more than registers of the past. 

But we are not obliged to take our conclusion bv infer- 
ence. "We can see for ourselves that the associations of 
the mind, which are a great part of its riches, must be 
increasing in number and variety forever, stimulating 
thought by multiplying its suggestives, and beautifying 
thought by weaving into it the colors of sentiment, end- 
lessly varied. 

The imagination is gathering in its images and kindling 
its eternal fires in the same manner. Having passed 
through many trains of worlds, mixing with scenes, socie- 
ties, orders of intelligence and powers of beatitude — just 
that which made the apostle in Patmos into a poet, by the 
visions of a single day — it is impossible that exeiy soul 
should not finally become filled with a glorious and pow- 
erful imagery, and be waked to a wonderfully creative 
enenrr. 

By the supposition it is another incident of this power 
of endless life, that passing down the eternal galleries of 
fact and event, it must be forever having new cognitions 
and accumulating: new premises. Bv its own contacts it 
will, at some future time, have touched even whole worlds 
and felt them through and made premises of all there is 
in them. It will know God by experiences correspond- 
ently enlarged, and itself by a consciousness correspond- 
entiy illuminated. Having gathered in, at last, such 
worlds of premise, it is difficult for us now to conceive 



312 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

the vigor into which a soul may come, or the volume it 
may exhibit, the wonderful depth and scope of its judg- 
ments, its rapidity and certainty, and the vastness of its 
generalizations. It passes over more and more, and that 
necessarily, from the condition of a creature gathering up 
premises, into the condition of God, creating out of prem- 
ises ; for if it is not actually set to the creation of worlds, 
its very thoughts will be a discoursing in world-problems 
and theories equally vast in their complications. 

In the same manner, the executive energy of the will, 
the volume of the benevolent affections, and all the active 
powers, will be showing, more and more impressively, 
what it is to be a power of endless life. They that have 
been swift in doing God's will and fulfilling his mighty 
errands, will acquire a marvelous address and energy in 
the use of their powers. They that have taken worlds 
into their love will have a love correspondent^ capacious, 
whereupon also it will be seen that their will is settled in 
firmness, and raised in majesty according to the vastness 
of impulse there is in the love behind it. They that have 
great thoughts, too, will be able to manage great causes, 
and they that are lubricated eternally in the joys that feed 
their activity, will never tire. What force, then, must be 
finally developed in what now appears to be the tenuous 
and fickle impulse, and the merely frictional activity of a 
bum an soul. 

On this subject the scriptures indulge in no declamation, 
but only speak in hints and start us off by questions, well 
understanding that the utmost they can do is to waken in 
us the sense of a future scale of being unimaginable, and 
beyond the compass of our definite thought. Here they 
drive us out in the almost cold mathematical question — 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 313 

what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul? Here they show us in John's vision, 
Moses and Elijah, as angels, suggesting our future classifi- 
cation among angels, which are sometimes called chariots 
of God, to indicate their excelling strength and swiftness 
ill careering through his empire, to do his will. Here they 
speak of powers unimaginable as regards the volume 
of their personality, calling them dominions, thrones, 
principalities, powers, and appear to set us on a foot- 
ing with these dim majesties. Here they notify us that it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be. Here they call us 
sons of God. Here they bolt upon us — But I said ye are 
gods ; as if meaning to waken us by a shock ! In these 
and all ways possible, they contrive to start some better 
conception in us of ourselves, and of the immense signifi- 
cance of the soul ; forbidding us always to be the dull 
mediocrities into which, under the stupor of our unbe- 
lief, we are commonly so ready to subside. 0, if we 
could tear aside the veil, and see for but one hour what it 
signifies to be a soul in the power of an endless life, 
what a revelation would it be ! 

But there is yet another side or element of meaning sug- 
gested by this expression, which requires to be noted. It 
looks on the soul as a falling power, a bad force, rushing 
downward into ruinous and final disorder. If we call it a 
principality in its possible volume, it is a falling princi- 
pality. It was this which made the mighty priesthood of 
the Lord necessary. For the moment we look in upon the 
soul's great movement as a power, and find sin entered 
there, we perceive that every thing is in disorder. It is like 
a mighty engine in which some pivot or lever is broken, 
whirling and crashing and driving itself into a wreck, 

21 



314 THE POWER OF AN EN'DLESS LIFE. 

The disastrous effects of sin in a soul will be just accord- 
ing to the powers it contains, or embodies; for every force 
becomes a bad force, a misdirected and self-destructive force, 
a force which can never be restored, save by some other 
which is mightier and superior. What, in this view, can 
be more frightful than the disorders loosened in it by a 
state of sin. 

And what shall we say of the result or end ? Must the 
immortal nature still increase in volume without limit, 
and so in the volume of its miseries ; or only in its mis- 
eries by the conscious depths of shame and weakness into 
which it is falling ? On this subject I know not what to 
say. We do see that bad minds, in their evil life, gather 
force and expand in many, at least, of their capabilities, 
on to a certain point or limit. As far as to that point or 
limit, they appear to grow intense, powerful, and, as the 
world says, great. But they seem, at last, and apart from 
the mere decay of years, to begin a diminishing process ; 
they grow jealous, imperious, cruel, and so far weak 
They become little, in the girding of their own stringent 
selfishness. They burn to a cinder in the heat of theii 
own devilish passion. And so, beginning as heroes and 
demigods, they many of them taper off into awfully in- 
tense but still little men — intense at a mere point; which 
appears to be the conception of a fiend. Is it so that the 
bitterness of hell is finally created? Is it toward tin* 
pungent, acrid, awfully intensified, and talented littleness, 
that all souls under sin are gravitating? However this 
may be, we can see for ourselves that the disorders of sin, 
running loose in human souls, must be driving them down- 
ward into everlasting and complete ruin, the wreck cf all 
that is mightiest and loftiest in their immortality. One 



THE PO^VER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 315 

of the sublimes! and most fearful pictures ever given of 
this you will find in the first chapter to the Eomans. It 
reads like some battle among the gods, where all that is 
great and terrible and wild in the confusion, answers to the 
majesty of the powers engaged. And this is man, the 
power of an endless life, under sin. By what adequate 
power, in earth or in heaven, shall that sin be taken away? 
This brings me to consider — 

II. "What Christ, in his eternal priesthood, has done ; 
or the fitness and practical necessity of it, as related to the 
stupendous exigency of our redemption. 

The great impediment which the gospel of Christ en- 
counters, in our world, that which most fatally hinders its 

1 7 J 

reception, or embrace, is that it is too great a work. It 
transcends our belief, it wears a look of extravagance. 
We are beings too insignificant and low to eim'a^e an^ 
such interest on the part of God, or justify any such ex- 
penditure. The preparations made, and the parts acted, 
are not in the proportions of reason, and the very terms 
of the great salvation have, to our dull ears, a declamatory 
sound. How can we really think that the eternal God 
has set these more than epic machineries at work for such 
a creature as man ? 

My principal object, therefore, in the contemplations 
raised by this topic, has been to start some conception of 
ourselves, in the power of an endless life, that is more 
adequate. Mere immortality, or everlasting continuance, 
when it is the continuance only of littleness or mediocrity, 
does not make a platform or occasion high enough for this 
great mystery of the gospel. It is only when we see in 
human souls, taken as germs of power, a future magnitude 



316 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

and majesty transcending all present measures, that we 
come into any fit conception at all of Christ's mission to 
the world. Entering the gospel at this point, and regard- 
ing it as a work undertaken for the redemption of beings 
scarcely imagined as yet, of dominions, principalities, 
powders, — spiritual intelligences so transcendent that we 
have, as yet, no words to name them, — every thing done 
takes a look of proportion ; it appears even to be needed, 
and we readily admit that nothing less could suffice to 
restore the falling powers, or stop the tragic disorders 
loosened in them by their sin. How much more if, instead 
of drawing thus upon our imagination, we could definitely 
grasp the real import of our being, that which hitherto is 
only indicated, never displayed, and have it as a matter 
of positive and distinct apprehension. This power of 
endless life — could we lay hold of it ; could we truly feel 
its movement in us, and follow the internal presage to its 
mark ; or could we only grasp the bad force there is in it, 
and know it rushing downward, in the terrible lava-flood 
of its disorders, how true and rational, how magnificently 
divine would the great salvation of Christ appear, and in 
how great dread of ourselves should we hasten to it for 
refuge ! 

Then it would shock us no more that visibly it is no 
mere man that has arrived. Were he only a human 
teacher, reformer, philosopher, coming in our human 
plane to lecture on our self-improvement as men, in this 
measures of men, he would even be less credible than now. 
Nothing meets our want, in fact, but to see the boundaries 
of nature and time break way to let in a being and a 
power visibly not of this world. Let him be the Eternal 
Ron of God and Word of the Father, descending out of 



THE POWER OF AX ENDLESS LIFE. 317 

higher worlds to be incarnate in this. As we have lost 
our measures, let us recover them, if possible, in the sense 
restored of our everlasting brotherhood with him. Let 
him so be made a priest for us, not after the law of a car- 
nal commandment, but after the power of an endless life — 
the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image 
of his person — God manifest in the flesh — God in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself. All the better and 
more proportionate and probable is it, if he comes heralded 
bv innumerable angels, burstino; into the skv, to conojatu- 
late their fallen peers with songs of deliverance — Glory to 
God in the Highest, peace on earth, good will toward men. 
Humbled to the flesh and its external conditions, he will 
only the more certainly even himself with our want, if he 
dares to say — Before Abraham was, I am — all power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Is he faultless, so 
that no man convinceth him of sin, revealing in the humble 
guise of humanity the absolute beauty of God ; how could 
anv thino* less or inferior meet our want? If he dares to 
make the most astounding pretensions, all the better, if 
only his pretensions are borne out by his life and actions. 
Let him heal the sick, feed the hungry, still the sea by his 
word. Let his doctrine not be human, let it bear the stamp 
of a higher mind and be verified and sealed by the perfec- 
tion of his character. Let him be transfigured, if he may, 
in the sight of two worlds ; of angels from the upper, and 
of men from this ; that, beholding his excellent glory, no 
doubt may be left of his transcendent quality. 

Xd matter if the men that follow him and love him arc 1 , 
just for the time, too slow to apprehend him. 1 uld 

they see, with eyes holden, the divinity that is hid under 
such a garb of poverty and patience? How could thej 

27* 



318 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

seize on the possibility that this man of sorrows is reveal- 
ing even the depths of (rod's eternal love, by these more 
than mortal burd(&s ? If the factitious distinctions of so- 
ciety pass for nothing with him, if he takes his lot among 
the outcast poor, how else could he show that it is not any 
tier of quality, but our great fallen humanity, the power 
of an endless life, that engages him. And when, with a 
degree of unconcern that is itself sublime, he says — The 
prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me; how 
else could he convey so fitly the impression that the high- 
est royalty and stateliest throne to him is simple man 
himself? 

But the tragedy gathers to its last act, and fearful is to 
be the close. Never did the powers of eternity, or endless 
life in souls, reveal themselves so terribly before. But he 
came to break their force, and how so certainly as to let it 
break itself across his patience? By his miracles and 
reproofs, and quite as much by the unknown mystery of 
greatness in his character, the deepest depths of malice in 
immortal evil are now finally stirred; the world's wild 
wrath is concentered on his person, and his soul is, for the 
hour, under an eclipse of sorrow; exceeding sorrowful even 
Unto death. But the agony is shortly passed ; he says, I 
am ready ; and they take him, Son of God though he be, 
and Word of the Father, and Lord of glory, to a cross 1 
They nail him fast, and what a sign do they give, in that 
dire phrenzy, of the immortal depth of their passion I The 
sun refuses to look on the sight, and the frame of nature 
shudders ! He dies ! it is finished ! The body that was 
taken for endurance and patience, has drunk up all the 
gall of the world's malice, and now rests in the tomb. 

No! there is more. Lo! he is not here, but is risen. 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 319 

he has burst tlie bars of death and become the first fruits 
of them that slept. In that sign behold his victory. Just 
that is done which signifies eternal redemption — the con- 
quest and recovery of free minds, taken as powers disman- 
tled by eternal evil. By this offering, once for all the work 
is finished. What can evil do, or passion, after this, when 
its bitterest arrows, shot into the divine patience, are by 
that patience so tenderly and sovereignly broken ? There- 
fore now to make the triumph evident, he ascends, a visi- 
ble conqueror, to the Father, there to stand as priest for- 
ever, sending forth his Spirit to seal, and testifying that 
he is able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto 
God by him. 

This, in brief historic outline, is the great sal- 
vation. And it is not too great. It stands in glorious 
proportion with the work to be done. Nothing else or less 
would suffice. It is a work supernatural transacted in the 
plane of nature ; and what but such a work could restore 
the broken order of the soul under evil ? It incarnates 
God in the world, and what but some such opening of the 
senses to God or of God to the senses, could reinstate him 
in minds that have lost the consciousness of him, and fallen 
off to live apart ? What but this could enter him again, 
as a power, into the world's life and history? We are 
astonished by the revelation of divine feeling ; the expense 
of the sacrifice wears a look of extravagance. If we are 
jonly the dull mediocrities we commonly take ourselves to 
'be, it is quite incredible. But if God, seeing through our 
possibilities into our real eternities, comprehends, in the 
view, all we are to be or become, as powers of endless life, 
is there not some probability that he discovers a good deal 
more in us than we do in ourselves; enough to justify all 



320 THE POUTER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE, 

the concern lie testifies, all the sacrifice he makes in H13 
passion of his Son ? And as God has accurately weighed 
the worlds and even the atoms, accurately set them in. 
their distances and altitudes, has he not also in this incarn- 
ate grace and passion, which offend so many by their ex- 
cess, measured accurately the unknown depths and mag- 
nitudes of our eternity, the momentum of our fall, the 
tragic mystery of our disorder ? And if we can not com- 
prehend ourselves, if we are even a mystery to ourselves, 
what should his salvation be but a mystery of godliness 
equally transcendent? If Christ were a philosopher, a 
human teacher, a human example, we might doubtless 
reason him and set him in our present scales of proportion, 
but he would as certainly do nothing for us equal to our 
want. 

Inasmuch as our understanding has not yet reached oui 
measures, we plainly want a grace which only faith can 
receive ; for it is the distinction of faith that it can receive 
a medication it can not definitely trace, and admit into the 
consciousness what it can not master in thought. Christ 
therefore comes not as a problem given to our reason, but 
as a salvation offered to our faith. His passion reaches a 
deeper point in us than we can definitely think, and his 
Eternal Spirit is a healing priesthood for us, in the lowest 
and profoundest roots of our great immortality, those 
whi3h we have never seen ourselves. By our faith in him 
too as a mystery, he comes into our guiltiness, at a point 
back of all speculative comprehension, restoring that 
peace of innocence which is speculatively impossible ; for 
how in mere speculation can any thing done for our sin, 
annihilate the fact; and without that, how take our guilt 
away? Still it goes! We know, as we embrace him, 



THE POWEE OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 32] 

that it goes! He has reached a point in us. by his myste- 
rious priesthood, deep enough even to take our. guiltiness 
away, and establish us in a peace that is even as the peace 
of innocence! 

So, if we speak of our passions, our internal disorders, 
the wild, confused and even downward rush of our in- 
thralled powers, he performs, in a mystery of love and 
the Spirit, what no teaching or example could. The man- 
ner we can trace bv no effort of the understanding ; we 
can only see that he is somehow able to come into the 
very germ principle of our life, and be a central, regulating, 
new-creating force in our disordered growth itself. And 
if we speak of righteousness, it is ours, when it is not 
ours ; how can a being unrighteous be established in the 
sense of righteousness? Logically, or according to the 
sentence of our speculative reason, it is impossible. And 
yet, in Christ, we have it ! We are consciously in it, as we 
are in him, and all we can say is, that it is the righteousness 
of God, by faith, unto all and upon all them that believe. 

But I must draw my subject to a close. It is a common 
impression with persons who hear, but do not accept, the 
calls of Christ and his salvation, that they are required to 
be somewhat less in order to be Christian. They must be 
diminished in quantity, taken down, shortened, made 
feeble and little, and then, by the time they have let go 
their manhood, they will possibly come into the way of 
salvation. They hear it declared that, in becoming little 
children, humble, meek, poor in spirit; in ceasing from 
our will and reason ; and in giving up ourselves, our 
eagerness, revenge, and passion, — thus, and thus only, can 
we be accepted; but, instead of taking all these as so many 



B22 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

figures antagonistic to our pride, our ambition, and the 
determined self-pleasing of our sin, they take them abso- 
lutely, as requiring a real surrender and loss of our proper 
manhood itself. Exactly contrary to this, the gospel re- 
quires them to be more than they are, — greater, higher, 
nobler, stronger, — all which they were made to be m the 
power of their endless life. These expressions, just referred 
to have no other aim than simply to cut off weaknesses, 
break down infirmities, tear away boundaries, and let the 
soul out into liberty, and power, and greatness. What is 
weaker than pride, self-will, revenge, the puffing of con- 
ceit and rationality, the constringing littleness of all selfish 
passion. And, in just these things it is that human souls 
are so fatally shrunk in all their conceptions of themselves; 
so that Christ encounters, in all men, this first and most 
insurmountable difficulty; to make them apprised of their 
real value to themselves. For, no sooner do they wake to 
the sense of their great immortality than they are even 
oppressed by it. Every thing else shrinks to nothingness, 
and they go to him for life. And then, when they receive 
him, it is even a bursting forth into magnitude. A new 
inspiration is upon them, all their powers are exalted y a 
wondrous inconceivable energy is felt, and, having come 
into the sense of God, which is the element of all real 
greatness, they discover, as it were in amazement, what it 
is to be in the true capacity. 

A similar mistake is connected with their impressions of 
faith. They are jealous of faith, as being only weakness. 
They blame the gospel, because it requires faith, as a con- 
dition of salvation. And yet, as I have here abundantly 
shown, it requires faith just because it is a salvation large 
enough to meet the measures of the soul, as a power of 



THE POWEE OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 328 

endless life. And, 0, if you could once get away, my 
friends, from that sense of mediocrity and nothingness to 
which you are shut up, under the stupor of your self-seek- 
ing and your sin, how easy would it be for you to believe : 
Naj , if but some faintest suspicion could steal into you of 
what your soul is. and the tremendous evils working in it, 
nothing but the mystery of Christ's death and passion 
would be sufficient for vou. Now vou are nothing; to 
yourselves, and therefore Christ is too great, the mystery 
of his cross an offense. 0, thou spirit of grace, visit these 
darkened minds, to whom thy gospel is hid, and let the 
light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of 
Jesus Christ, shine into them ! Eaise in them the piercing 
question, that tears the world away and displays the grim- 
ace of its follies, — What shall it profit a man to gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul ? 

I should do you a wrong to close this subject without 
conducting your minds forward to those anticipations of 
the future which it so naturally suggests. You have all 
observed the remarkable interest which beings of other 
worlds are shown, here and there in the scripture, to feel 
in the transactions of this. These, like us, are powers of 
endless life, intelligences that have had a history parallel 
to our own. Some of them, doubtless, have existed myri- 
ads of ages, and consequently now are far on in the course 
of their development, — far enough on to have discerned 
what existence is, and the amount of power and dignity 
there is in it. Hence their interest in us, who as yet are 
only candidates, in their view, for a greatness yet to be 
revealed. And the interest they show seems extravagant 
to us, just as the gospel itself is, and for the same reasons. 
They break into the sky, when Christ is born, chanting 



324 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS 1IFE. 

their AU-IIaiK They visit the world on heavenly erranda 
and perform their unseen ministries to the heirs of salva« 
tion, They watch for our repentances, and there is joj 
among them before God, when but one is gathered to theif 
company, in the faith of salvation. And the reason is that 
(hey have learned so much about the proportions and 
measures of things, which as yet are hidden from us. 
These angels that excel in strength, these ancient princes 
and hierarchs that have grown up in God's eternity and 
unfolded their mighty powers in whole ages of good, rec- 
ognize in us compeers that are finally to be advanced, ag 
they are. 

And here is the point where our true future dawns upon 
us. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here 
in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our 
future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But 
the power is in us, and that power is to be finally revealed. 
And what a revelation will that be ! Is it possible, you 
will ask in amazement, that you, a creature that was sunk 
in such dullness, and sold to such trivialities in your bond- 
age to the world, were, all this time, related to God and the 
ancient orders of his kingdom, in a being so majestic! 

How great a terror to some of you may that discovery 
be ! I can not say exactly how it will be with the bad 
minds, now given up finally to their disorders. Powers 
of endless life they still must be ; but how far shrank by 
that stringent selfishness, how far burned away, as magni- 
tudes, by that fierce combustion of passion, I do not know. 
But, if they diminish in volume and shrink to a more in- 
tensified power of littleness and fiendishness, eaten out, as 
regards all highest volume, by the malice of evil and the 
undying worm of its regrets, it will not be so with the 



THE POWEE OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 325 

righteous. Tliey will develop greater force of mind, 
greater volume of feeling, greater majesty of will and 
character, even forever. In the grand mystery of Christ 
and his eternal priesthood, — Christ, who ever liveth to 
make intercession, — they will be set in personal and ex- 
perimental connection with all the great problems of grace 
and counsels of love, comprised in the plan by which they 
have been trained, and the glories to which they are ex- 
alted. Attaining thus to greater force and stature of spirit 
than we are able now to conceive, they have exactly that 
supplied to their discovery which will carry them still 
further on, with the greatest expedition. Their subjects 
and conferences will be those of principalities and powers, 
and the conceptions of their great society will be corres- 
pondent ; for they are now coming to the stature necessary 
to a fit contemplation of such themes. The Lamb of re- 
demption and the throne of law, and a government compris- 
ing both will be the field of their studj 7 , and they will find 
their own once petty experience related to all that is vast- 
est and most transcendent in the works and appointments 
of God's empire. 0, what thoughts will spring up in such 
minds, surrounded by such fellow intelligences, entered on 
such themes, and present to such discoveries ! How grand 
their action! How majestic their communion! Their 
praise how august ! Their joys how full and clear ! Shall 
we ever figure, my friends, in scenes like these ? 0, this 
p:>wer of endless life! — great King of Life, and Priest of 
Kternity, reveal thyself to us, and us to ourselves, and 
quicken us to this unknown future before us. 



XVII. 

m 

RESPECTABLE SIN. 

John yiii. 9. — u And they which heard it, being convicted 
by their own conscience, went out, one by one, beginning at the 
eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus ivas left alone, and the 
viornan standing in the midst. 1 ' 1 

Et is with, sins as with, men or families, some have pedi- 
gree and some have not ; for there are kinds and modes of 
sin that have, in all ages, been held in respect and em- 
balmed with all the honors of history; and there are 
others that never were and never can be raised above the 
level even of disgust. The noble sins will, of course, be 
judged in a very different manner from the humble, base- 
born sins. The sins of fame, honor, place, power, bravery, 
genius, always in good repute, will not seldom be admired 
and applauded. But the low-blooded sins of felony, and 
vice, and base depravity are associated with brutality, and 
are universally held in contempt. Whether the real de- 
merit of the two classes of sin is measured by such dis- 
tinctions is more questionable. Such distinctions certainly 
had little weight with Christ. He was even more severe 
upon the sins of learning, wealth, station, and religious 
sanctimony, than upon the more plebeian, or more despised 
class of sins. Indeed, he seems to look directly through 
all the fair conventionalities, and to bring his judgment 
down upon some point more interior and deeper. He ap- 
pears, in general, to be thoroughly disgusted with all the 



RESPECTABLE SIN. 327 

mere respectabilities, whether men or sins. The hypocri- 
sies of religion, the impostures of learning, .the gilded 
shows of wealth gotten by extortion, the proud airs of 
authority and power employed in acts of oppression, pro- 
voke his indignation, and he deals with them in such 
terms of emphasis as indicate the profoundest possible 
abhoiTense. 

Hence the jealous}- with which he was watched by the 
riders, and priests, and rulers; for every few days some 
Rabbi, Scribe, lawyer, or committee of such, was sent out 
to observe him, or question him, or draw him, if possible, 
into some kind of treason in his doctrine ; because they 
feared his influence with the people, lest he might put 
himself at their bead and raise a great revolution that 
would even subvert the present social order. 

The cunning plot his enemies are working, in my text, 
is instigated by this kind of fear. He is teaching, it ap- 
pears, a great multitude of people in the temple, when 
suddenly a company of Scribes and Pharisees are seen 
hustling in through the crowd, leading up a woman, to set 
her before him. She has been guilty, they say, of a base 
crime which the law of Moses punishes with public ston- 
ing and death, and they demand of him what shall be done 
with her ? hoping that, out of the same perverse favor he 
is wont to show to low people, he will take the woman's 
part, and so give them the desired opportunity to throw 
contempt on his character, and exasperate the popular 
superstition against him. 

Christ, perceiving apparently their design, determines to 
put them to confusion. He remains a long time silent, 
making no answer, and of course none that can be taken 
hold of. They press him for a reply ; still no reply ifl 



328 RESPECTABLE SIN. 

given. They wait, and still it is not given. There they 
stand in the center of the great concourse, all looking ax 
them, and, as they soon begin to fancy, looking directly 
into them. It is a most uncomfortable position for them. 
To give still greater pungency to their thoughts, Christ 
withdraws his eyes from them, and, as if waiting for their 
complete confusion, writes abstractedly on the pavement 
At length they grow perplexed, and begin to ask them- 
selves how they shall get out of their -very awkward pre- 
dicament. They press him still more vehemently, but he 
refuses to speak, save simply to say, — Let the man of you 
that is without sin throw the first stone at the woman, if 
she is guilty ; and immediately falls to writing abstractedly 
on the ground again. The arrow sticks, and the suspense 
of silence makes them more and more conscious of the 
pain ; till finally they can bear it no longer. Convicted 
thus by their own conscience, they went out, as the text 
has it, one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the 
last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in 
the midst. 

Look upon them now, as they withdraw, and follow 
them with your eye, as probably Christ and the whole as- 
sembly did. Observe the mannerly order of their shame, — ■ 
beginning at the eldest, even unto the last! See how care- 
fully they keep the sacred rules of good breeding and 
deference to age, even in their sniveling defeat, and the 
chagrin of their baffled conspiracy, and you will begin to 
find how base a thing may take on airs of dignity, and 
how oontemptible, in fact, these airs of dignity may be. 

The subject thus presented is respectalle sin, sin that takes 
on the semblance of goodness and judges itself by the dignity 



BESPECTABLE SIN 329 

of its manner and appearance. Almost all the really great 
or sublime sins of the world are of this class, and I shall 
undertake to show that this more respectable type of sin 
is often, if not generally, deepest in the spirit of sin, and, 
in the sight of God, most guilty. 

Just this, I think, has been the impression of you al^ 
in the remarkable scene referred to in my text. These 
plausible accusers, pressing in with their victim in such 
airs of dignity, and retiring in such careful deference to 
age as not to allow even a year's difference to be disre- 
garded, have yet been virtually detected and foiled in a 
thoroughly wicked conspiracy. Had they been a gang of 
thieves, their transaction would have been more base only 
in the name; for it was, in fact, a kind of dramatic lie, 
deliberately planned, to snare an artless, worthy, and visi- 
bly holy man. Accordingly, now that they are gone, 
driven out by the recoil of their own base trick, the Sav- 
iour, without using any word of reproach, quietly proceeds 
to bring out the scene just where their real character will 
be most impressively displayed. He says to the woman, — 
u Where are thine accusers? Hath no man condemned 
thee?" "No man, Lord." " Neither do I; go, sin no 
more." Sinner that she was, not even these sanctimonious 
conspirators could stand the challenge of their own sina 
long enough to accuse her. And the result is, that we are 
left by Christ in the impression, and that designedly, that 
on the whole, the woman, in her most shameful sin, wag 
really less of a sinner than they. Her, therefore, we pity. 
Them we denounce and despise. How many things are 
WC ready to imagine, that might soften our judgment of 
her fall, if we only knew the secret of her sad history. ( )iu 

28* 



830 EESPECTABLE SIN. 

judgment of tlieir stratagem, on the other hand, permits 
no softening, but we approve ourselves only the more con- 
fidently, the more heartily we despise and the more unre- 
strainedly we detest their hypocrisy in it. In pursuing 
now this very serious subject, we need, — 

First of all, to clear the influence of a false or defective 
Impression, growing out of the fact, that we oursel ves are 
persons that live so entirely in the atmosphere of character 
and decency. Our range of life is so walled in by the re- 
spectability of our associations, that what is on the other 
side of the wall is very much a world unknown. Hence 
we have no such opinion or impression of sin, anywhere, 
as we ought to have. It is with us all our life long and 
in all our associations ; much as it is with us here in our 
assembly for worship. The offensive and repulsive forms 
of sin are almost never here, by so much as any one sign, 
or symptom. The sin is here, and sin that wants salvation ; 
but it is sin so thoroughly respectable as to make it very 
nearly impossible to produce any just impression of its 
deformity. Sitting here in this atmosphere of decency 
and order, how can you suffer any just impression of the 
dreadful nature of that evil which, after all, wears a look 
so plausible. If there came in with you, to mingle in your 
audience, a fair representation only of the town ; if you 
heard, in the porch, the profane oaths of the cellars and 
hells of gambling; if you looked about with a cautious 
feeling, right and left, in the seat, lest some one might rifle 
your dress, or pick your pocket ; if the victims of drink 
were seen reeling into the seats, here and there, and their 
hungry, shivering children were crying at the door, for 
bread ; if the diseased and loathsome relics of vice, recog- 
nized sometimes as the sons and daughters of families once 



RESPECTABLE SIN". 831 

'living in respect and affluence, were sprinkled about you, 
tainting the air yon breathe ; in a word, if actual life were 
here, in correct representation, how different a matter 
would it be for me to speak of sin, how different for yon 
to hear ! And the same holds true of the associations of 
your life generally. Sin, in its really revolting, shocking 
forms, seldom gets near enough to you to meet your eye. 
What you know of it is mostly gotten from the newspa- 
pers, and is scarcely more of a reality to you, many times, 
than the volcanoes you hear of in the moon. 

Secondly, we need also to clear another false or defect- 
ive impression, growing out of the general tendency in 
mankind to identify sin with vice ; and, of course, to judge 
that whatever is clear of vice is clear also of sin ; which, 
in fact, is the same as to judge that whatever sin is respect- 
able is no sin at all. Or, sometimes, we identify sin with 
acts of wrong, or personal injury, such as deeds of rob- 
bery, fraud, seduction, slander, and the like. In this view, 
again, whatever sin is respectable enough to be clear of all 
such deeds of wrong is, of course, no sin. "Whereas, there 
may be great sin where there is no vice, bitter and deep 
guiltiness before God where there is never one act of per- 
sonal wrong or injury committed. All vice, all wrong, 
presupposes sin, but sin may be the reigning principle of 
the life, from childhood to the grave, and never produce 
one scar of vice, or blamable injury to a fellow-being. In- 
deed we must go further, we must definitely say that even 
virtue itself, as the term is commonly used, classes under 
Bin, or has its root in sin. Virtue, as men speak, is conduct 
approved irrespectively of any good principle of conduct; 
and it is, for the most part, a goodness wholly negative, 
consisting in the not doing, the abstaining, and keeping off 



332 EESPECTABLE SIN. 

from whatever is confessedly base and vicious. Sin, on the 
other hand, is the negation of good as respects the principle 
of good. Any thing is sin, as God judges, which is not in the 
positive, all-dominating power of universal love. Any thing 
called virtue, therefore, which consists in barely not doin°;, is 
sin of course ; because it is not in any positive principle cf 
love, or duty to God. Half the sin of mankind, therefore, 
consists, or is made up of virtue ; that is, of what is generally 
called virtue, and passes for a virtuous character in the com- 
mon speech of men. It is, in fact, respectable sin, nothing 
more ; and has exactly the same root with all sin, even the 
worst ; viz., the not being in God's love and a state of 
positive allegiance to God. 

Consider now, thirdly, and make due account of the 
fact, that respectable sin is not less guilty because it has a 
less revolting aspect. A feeling is very generally indulged, 
even by such as are confessedly blamable for not being in 
the christian life, that their blame or guilt is a thing of 
higher and finer quality than it would be under the ex- 
cesses and degrading vices many practice. They measure 
their sin by their outward standing and conduct, whereas 
all sin is of the same principle. The sin of one class is, in 
fact, the sin of the other, as respects every thing but man- 
ner and degree. There are different kinds of vice, but 
only one kind of sin ; viz., the state of being without God, 
or out of allegiance to God. All evil and sin, as we jus\ 
now saw, are of this same negative root ; the want of any 
holy principle; the state set off from God, and disem- 
powered and degraded by the separation. The respectable 
sin, therefore, shades into the unrespectable, not as being 
different in kind, but only as twilight shades into the night 
The evil spirit, called sin, may be trained up to politeness, 



RESPECTABLE SIN. 333 

and made to be genteel sin ; it may be elegant, cultivated 
Bin ; it may be very exclusive and fashionable sin ; it may 
be industrious, thrifty sin; it may be a great political 
manager, a great commercial operator, a great inventor ; it 
may be learned, scientific, eloquent, highly poetic sin ; still 
it is sin, and, being that, has in fact the same radical or 
fundamental quality that, in its ranker and less restrained 
conditions, produce all the most hideous and revolting 
crimes of the world. 

There is a very great difference, I admit, between a cour- 
teous man and one who is ill-natured and insulting, between 
a generous man and a niggard, a pure and a lewd, a man 
who lives in thought and a man who lives in appetite, a 
great and wise operator in the market and a thief; and 
yet, taken as apart from all accidental modifications, or 
degrees, the sin-quality or principle is exactly the same in 
all. As in water face answereth to face, so one class of 
hearts to the other. The respectable and the disgusting 
are twin brothers ; only you see in one how well he can 
be made to look, and in the other how both would look, 
if that which is in both were allowed to have its bent and 
work its own results unrestrained. 

Again, fourthly, it is often true that what is looked upon 
as respectable sin is really more base in spirit, or internal 
quality, than that which is more, and more universally, 
despised. And yet this is not the judgment of those who 
are most apt to rule the judgments of the world. The lies 
of high life, for example, are the liberties asserted by poweT 
and respectable audacity. The lies of commoners and 
humble persons are a fatal, irredeemable dishonor. The 
fashionable, who spurns the obligation of an honest debt, 
is only asserting the right and title of fashion; but the 



331 RESPECTABLE SIN. 

merchant, or the tradesman, who avoids the payment of 
his bond, loses his honor and becomes a knave. The con- 
queror, who overruns and desolates a kingdom, will be 
named with respect or admiration by history, when, prob- 
ably enough, Grod will look upon him with as much greater 
abhorrence, than if he had robbed a hen-roost, as his crime 
is bloodier and more afflictive to the good of the world. 
How very respectable those learned impostors the Scribes, 
and those sanctimonious extortioners the Pharisees ! How 
base those knavish tax-gatherers and sinners in low life ! 
But Christ, who respected not the appearance, but judged 
righteous judgment, had a different opinion. It is not the 
show of a sin, my friends, which makes it base, but it is its 
interior quality, — what it is in motive, feeling, thought. 
It is the gloat of inward passion, the stringent pinch of 
meanness, the foulness of inward desire and conception, 
the fire of inward malignity, the rot of lust and hypoc- 
risy. It is not for me, as public inspector of sins, to pass 
on their relative quality, or fix the brand of their degree. 
1 will only say that the outwardly respectable look of them 
is no good test of their quality ; leaving it, as a question 
between you and your God, whether, if all the inward 
shapes of your thought, motive, feeling, desire, and passion 
were brought out into the open sight of this community; 
and all the false and factitious rules of judgment accepted 
by us were swept away, it might not possibly appear that 
there are characters here, in this very respectable assembly, 
as base in real demerit as many that are classed among the 
outcasts of ths town. 

It is obvious, fifthly, that what I am calling respectable 
Bin is commonly more inexcusable, — not always, but com- 
monly. Sometimes the most depraved and abandoned 



RESPECTABLE SIX. 335 

characters are those who have east themselves down, by 
their perversity, from the highest standing of privilege. 
But, however this may be, it can not be denied that the 
depraved and abject classes of society have, to a great ex- 
tent, been trained up to the very life they lead ; to be idle 
and beg, to be cunning, sharp, predatory, in one way or 
another, thieves ; to look upon the base pleasures of self- 
indulgence and appetite as the highest rewards of exist- 
ence, They are ignorant by right of their origin, brutal 
in manners and feeling, accustomed only to what is lowest 
in the possible range of human character. Sometimes, 
alas ! the real want of bread has made them desperate. I 
will not become the sponsor of their crime ; enough that 
they are criminal, and consciously so. But who is there 
of you that does not pity their hard lot ; who of you that, 
considering their most sad history, is not often more ready 
to weep over than to judge them. Is it incredible to you 
that, in your own respectable and decent life of sin, taken 
as related to your high advantages, there may even be a 
degree of criminality, which, as God estimates crime, is far 
more inexcusable than that for which many are doomed to 
suffer the severest and most ignominious penalties of pub- 
lic law ? 

I add a single consideration further; viz., that respect 
able sin is more injurious, or a greater mischief, than the 
r and more disgusting forms of vicious abandonment 
The latter create for us greater public burdens, in the way 
of charity and taxation for the poor, and of judicial pro- 
ceedings and punishments for public malefactors. They 
annoy us more too by their miseries and the crimes by 
which they disturb the security and peace of society. And 
yet it is really a fair subject of doubt, whether, m * moral 



336 RESPECTABLE SIN. 

joint of view, they have not a wholesome influence ant 
are not a social benefit. They tempt no one. Contrary to 
this, they repel and warn away from vice every one that 
looks upon them. They hang out a flag of distress upon 
every shoal of temptation. They show us the last results 
of all sin, and the colors in which they exhibit sin are al- 
ways disgusting, never attractive. In this view they are 
really one of the moral wants of the world. We should 
never conceive the inherent baseness of sin, if it were not 
shown by their experiment; revealed in their delirium, 
their rags, their bloated faces, and bleared eyes, and totter- 
ing bodies, and, more than all, in the extinction of their 
human feeling, and the substitution of a habit or type of 
being so essentially brutal. We look down into this hell 
that vice opens, and with a shudder turn awaj' ! Mean- 
time, respectable sin, — how attractive, how fascinating its 
pleasures. Its gay hours, its shows and equipages, its 
courteous society, its entertainments, its surroundings of 
courtly form and incident, — how delicious to the inspec- 
tion of fancy. Even its excesses seem to be only a name 
for spirit. The places of temptation too are not the hells 
and brothels, but the saloons of pleasure and elegant dissi- 
pation. Vice is the daughter of pleasure; all unrespect- 
able sin the daughter of respectable. Nay, if we go to the 
bottom, church-going sin is the most plausible form of sin 
that was ever invented, and, in that view, the most danger- 
ous For, if a man never goes to the place of worship, we 
take his sin with a warning, or at least with some little 
sense of caution; but, if he is regular at church, a respect- 
ful hearer of the word, a sober, correct, thoughtful man. 
still, (though never a Christian,) a safe, successful, always 
respected never-faltering character, — then how many will 



RESPECTABLE SIN 337 

be ready to imagine that there is one form of sin that is 
about as good as piety itself, and possibly even better thaji 
piety. And so this church-going sin gives countenance 
and courage to all other, — all the better and more effective 
countenance because no such thing is intended. There is, 
in short, no such thing as taking away the evil of sin by 
making it respectable. Make it even virtuous, as men 
Bpeak, and it will only be the worse in its power, as regards 
the enticements it offers to evil. It will not shock any one 
by deeds of robbery and murder, it will not revolt any one 
by its disgusting spectacles of shame and misery, but how 
many will it encourage and shield, in just that rejection of 
God, which is to be their bitter fall and their eternal over- 
throw. 

It is scarcely possible, in closing this very serious sub- 
ject, to name and duly set forth all the applications of 
which it is capable, or which it even presses on our 
attention. 

With how little reason, for example, are Christian peo- 
ple, and indeed all others, cowed by the mere name and 
standing of men, who are living still under the power of 
gin, and resisting or neglecting still the grace of their sal- 
vation. Doubtless it is well enough to look on them with 
respect, and treat them with a just deference ; but however 
high they may seem, allow them never to overtop your 
pity. For what is the fair show they make, but a mosl 
6orrowful appeal to your compassions and your prayers? 
How can a true Christian, one who is consciously ennobled 
by the glorious heirship in which he is sec, ever be intim- 
idated, or awed, or kept back in his approaches or his 
prayers, by respect to that which is only respectable sin ? 

29 



338 BESPECT^BLE BIN. 

If he goes to God, entering even into the holiest with 
holiness, how much more will he be able to stand before 
these princes of name and title and power, and speak to 
tnem of Christ and his great salvation. To falter in this 
boldness, brethren, is even a great wrong to our Master's 
gospel, which puts us, even the humblest of us, in a higher 
plane of dignity ; far far above any most honored sinneT 
of mankind. 

Again, it is impossible in such a subject as this, not to 
raise the question of morality, what it is, and is worth, 
and where it will land us in the great allotments of eter- 
nity. Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but 
another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative 
species of virtue, which consists in not doing what is 
scandalously depraved or wicked. But there is no heart 
of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the worst 
of felonies. It is the very same thing, as respects the 
denial of God, or the state of personal separation from 
God, that distinguishes all the most reprobate forms of 
character. A correct, outwardly virtuous man is the prin- 
ciple of sin well-dressed and respectably kept — nothing 
more. And will that save you? You can, I am sure, be 
in no great danger of believing that. A far greater dan- 
ger is that the decent, outwardly respectable manner of 
your sin will keep you from the discovery of its real 
nature, as a root of character in you. If we undertake 
to set forth the inherent weakness and baseness of sin, to 
open up the vile and disgustful qualities which make it, as 
the scriptures declare, abominable and hateful to God, if 
we speak of its poisonous and bitter effects within, and 
the inevitable and awful bondage it works in all the 



RESPECTABLE SIN. 383 

powers of choice and character, who of you can believe 
what we say? Such representations, you will think if 
you do not openly say, partake of extravagance. What 
can you know of sin, what can you feel of your deep 
spiritual need, when you are living so respectably ard 
maintain, in the outward life, a show of so great integrity, 
and even so much of refinement often in what is called 
virtue. True conviction of sin — how difficult is it, when 
Its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it 
twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously 
into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disor- 
ders by so many outward charms and attractions ! 

If then we are right in this estimate of morality and 
the very great dangers involved in it, how necessary is it, 
for a similar reason, that every man out of Christ, not 
living in any vicious practice, should set himself to the 
deliberate canvassing of his own moral state. Make a 
study of this subtle, cunningly veiled character, the state 
of reputable sin, and study it long enough to fathom its 
real import. Look into the secret motives and springs of 
your character ; inspect and study long enough to really 
perceive the strange, wild current of your thoughts ; de- 
tect the subtle canker in }~our feeling ; comprehend the 
deep ferment of your lusts, enmities, and passions ; hunt 
down the selfish principle which instigates and misdirects 
and turns off your whole life from God, setting all your 
aims on issues that reject Him ; ask, in a word, how this 
respectable sin appears, when viewed inwardly; how, if 
unrestrained by pride, and the conventional rules of de- 
cency and character, it would appear outwardly. Fathom 
the deep hunger of your soul, and listen to its invalid 



340 RESPECTABLE SIN 

wail of bondage, its mournful, unuttered cry of wam\ 
after God. Ask it of the enlightening Spirit of God, 
that he will open to your view yourself, and make you to 
know all that is inmost, deepest, most hidden in the habit- 
ually veiled deformity of your sin. Make it your prayel 
even to God— Search me, God, and try me ! 

You have a motive also in making this inquest, that i 
even more pressing than many of you will suspect. Fo 
no matter how respectable your sin is, you never can tel 
where it will carry you — how long it will be respectable, 
or where it will end. Enough, to know that it is sin, and 
that the principle of all sin is one and the same. In ita 
very germ you have, potentially, whatever is abhorrent, 
abominable, disgusting; and when the fruit is ripe, no 
man can guess into what shape of debasement and moral 
infamy, or public crime, it may finally bring him. If he 
hears of a murder, like that of Webster, for example, he 
may be very confident that, in his particular and particu- 
larly virtuous case of unreligious living, there is no liabil- 
ity to any such result. And perhaps there is not. Per- 
haps the danger is different. Avoiding what is bloody, 
he may fall into what is false or low — some damning dis- 
honesty or fraud, some violation of trust, some falsification 
of accounts, some debauchery of lust or appetite, some 
brutality which makes his very name and person a dis- 
gust. Sin works by no set methods. It has a way of 
ruin for every man, that is original and proper only to 
himself. Suffice it to say that, as long as you are in it 
and under its power, you can never tell what you are 
danger of. This one thing you may have as a truth ete 
TiaHy fixed, that respectable sin is, in principle, the mot 1 ! 



RESPECTABLE SIN. 341 

of all basest crime. Follow it on to the bitter end, and 
there is ignominy eternal. There is a law of retribution 
that keeps it company, and is never parted from it ; bj 
which law the end is being shaped and the hideous result 
prepared. If the delicate, pretentious, always correct 
sinner keeps to his decency here, the proper end will 
show itself hereafter, and then it will be seen how dark, 
after all, how deep in criminality, how bronzed in guilty 
thought, is every soul becoming under even the fairest 
shows of virtue, coupled with neglect of God, and separa- 
ted from his personal love. 

Advancing now a stage, observe again that it is on just 
this view of the world and of human character under sin, 
that the whole superstructure of Christianity is based. 
Christ comes forth to the world as a lost world. He 
makes no distinction of respectable and unrespectable as 
regards the common want of salvation. Nay, it is plain 
from his searching rebukes laid on the heads of the priests, 
the rulers, and others in high life, that he is sometimes 
moved with greatest abhorrence by the sin of those who 
are most respectable and even sanctimonious. Hence the 
solemn universality of his terms of salvation. Hence the 
declared impossibility of eternal life to any, save by the 
same great radical change of character ; a fact which he 
testifies directly to Nicodemus, the conscientious inquirer 
after truth, the sober and just senator, one of the very 
highest, noblest men in the nation, — Except a man be 
born again, he can not see the kingdom of God. He aska 
not how you appear, but whether you are human. Nay, 
if you come to him, like the young ruler, clothed in all 
Buch comely virtues that he is constrained to look on youi 

29* 



842 RESPECTABLE SIN 






ingenuous, conscientious character with love, he will tel] 
you, when you ask him what you are to do to have eternal 
life, that you must forsake all and come and follow him. 
Decency, correctness, praise — all these are but the guise 
of your sin, which guise he will tell you must be forever 
abandoned as a ground of confidence before God, and the 
sin, which now it only adorns and covers, must be itself 
removed and forever taken away by the blood of tha 
Lamb. 

Have I now in my audience any forlorn one, like the 
woman of my text, any youth, or older person, who is 
consciously sinking into the toils of vice and beginning 
to taste its bitter humiliations ; any that has consciously 
lost or begun to lose the condition of respect and reputa- 
ble living ; any that begins to scorn himself, or seems to 
be sinking under the pitiless scorn of the world's judg- 
ments? To such an one I rejoice to say, in the name of 
Jesus Christ, that there is no scorn with him. He does 
not measure sin by our conventional and often false rules 
of judgment. The basest sin he was even wont to find, 
in many cases, under the finest covering of respect. He 
will judge you rightly, not harshly. If you have fallen, 
or begun to fall, he wants to raise you. He offers you his 
free sympathy and support, and, if others lay their look 
of contempt upon your soul, he invites you kindly, whis 
pers love and courage, and if you are ready to receive 
him, waits also to say — Thou art mine, go, son; go, 
daughter ; sin no more ! 

Brethren professed in the name and gospel of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, it is him I follow, and not any want of 



RESPECTABLE SIN. 343 

charity I indulge, when I remind you that a still more 
mournful application of this subject is possibly required. 
What, alas! and apart from all severity of judgment, is 
the profession of many disciples but a state of serious and 
reputable sin ? They are virtuous persons, as that term 
is commonly used, good always on the negative side of 
prudence and caution. They have no vices. They bring 
no scandal on the cause of Christ by their walk. But to 
what does all this amount, if there be nothing farther and 
more positive to go with it ? Does the mere keeping out 
of vice and scandalous misdoing, does the exactest possible 
life, in fact, if we speak only of its correctness, constitute 
a living and true piety ? What is it, even at the best, but 
a reputable, or possibly a somewhat christian-looking state 
of sin ? The Pharisees and other religious persons of the 
Saviour's time were abundantly and even sanctimoniously 
exact persons. And jet the Saviour discovered in them, 
if we can judge from the tone of his rebukes, the worst 
and most incurable type of moral abandonment. They 
had so little sense of holiness, and so little sympathy with 
it, that they were his bitterest enemies, and even became 
his betrayers and murderers. He saw all this beforehand, 
wrapped up in their character; — their washings, sacrifices, 
long prayers, and scrupulous ti things did not conceal it 
You certainly have no such ceremonies ; you do not be- 
lieve in them, but you have covenants, communions, bap- 
tisms, family altars. ILive you, in company with these, 
and answering to these, the new man of love, created 
anew in Christ Jesus unto good works? If you have not, 
if you live a dumb, unpositive life, under the power of the 
world, selfish still as before, and self-pursuing; if the old 
man is not crucified, and the new man, Christ, is certainly 



311 RESPECTABLE SIN. 

not being formed within you. then your profession signi- 
fies nothing but the mere respectability of your sin. 
What is your supposed piety but this, if it have no spirit- 
ual and inwardly transforming power? Christ is redemp- 
tion only as he actually redeems and delivers our nature 
from sin. If he is not the law and spring of a new spirit 
of life, he is nothing. Beware, let me say to you in 
Christ's name, — beware of the leaven of the Pharisees 
and Sadducees. The true principle, my brethren, is this, 
and if this will yield us no just title to the Christian 
name, w r hat we call our piety is in honest truth nothing 
more, or better than a decent shape of sin ; — For as many 
as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God — 
as many, no more. Are we so led, do we so live? 

To dismiss this subject without some prospective refer- 
ence, or glance of forecast on the future, is impossible, 
however painful and appalling the contemplations it will 
raise. When you go to stand before Gocl, my friends, it 
will not be your dress, or your house, or your titles, or 
your wealth, no, nor even your virtues, however much 
commended here, that will give you a title of entrance 
among the glorified. Respectable sin will not pass then 
and there as here. The honor, the nobility of it is now 
gone by. The degrees, indeed, of sin are many, but the 
kind is one, and that a poor, dejected, emptied form of 
shame and sorrow. How appalling such a thought to any 
one who is capable of thought, and not absolutely brutal- 
ized by his guilt. Furthermore, as sin is sin, everywhere 
and in all forms, the respectable and the unrespectabie, 
the same in principle, and when the appearances are dif- 
ferent, the same often in criminality, the world of future 



RESPECTABLE SIN, 845 

retiibuiion must, of course, be a world of strange com- 
panionships. AVe are expressly told, and it seems a 
matter of reason also to suppose, that the spirits of guilty 
men will not be assorted there by their tastes, but by their 
character and demerits. Death is the limit and end of all 
mere conventionalities. The fictitious assortments of the 
earthly state never pass that limit. Bank, caste, fashion, 
disgust, fastidiousness, delicacy of sin — these are able to 
draw their social lines no longer. Proximity now is held 
to the stern, impartial principle of inward demerit; — That 
all may receive according to the deeds done in the body. 
This is the level of adjustment, and there appears to bo 
no other. The standing of the high priests, the Scribes. 
and Pharisees, and the forlorn woman of my text, may be 
inverted now, or they may all take rank together. And 
so also many of you, that are now pleasing yourselves in 
the dignity of your virtues, and the honors of your social 
standing, may fall there into group and gradation, with 
such as now you even look away from with profoundest 
distaste or revulsion. The subject is painful; I will not 
pursue it. I will only remind you that where the lines 
of justice lead, there you must j-ourselves follow; and if 
that just award of respectable sin yields you only the 
promise of a scale of companionships from which your 
soul recoils with disgust, there is no wisdom for you but 
to be as disgustful of the sin as of the companionships, 
and draw yourself, at once, to Him who is Purity, and 
Peace, and Glory, and, in all, Eternal Life. 



IV1I1. 

THE POWER OF GOD US" SELF-SACRIFICE, 
1 Cor. i. 24. — " Christ the power of God" 

The cross and Christ crucified are the subject here in 
hand. Accordingly, when Christ is called the power of 
God, we are to understand Christ crucified; and then the 
problem is to conceive how Christ, dying in the weakness 
of mortality and exhibiting, just there, if we take him as 
the incarnate manifestation of God, the humblest tokens 
of passibility and frailty, is yet and there, as being the 
crucified, the power of God. 

At our present point and without some preparation of 
thought, we can hardly state intelligibly, or with due force 
of assertion, the answer to such a question. The two ele- 
ments appear to be incompatible, and we can only say that 
the power spoken of is, not the efficient, or physical, but 
the moral power of God ; that namely of his feeling and 
character. But as this will be no statement sufficiently 
clear to stand as the ruling proposition of a discourse, I 
will risk a departure from our custom and, instead of draw- 
ing my subject formally from my text, I will begin at a 
point external and draw, by stages, toward it; paying it, 
as I conceive, the greater honor, that I suppose it to be so 
rich and deep in its meaning, as to require and to reward 
the labor of a discourse, if simply we may apprehend the 
lesson it teaches. 



THE POWEB OF GOD. 347 

Christ, then, the crucified, and so the 'power of God — thu 
is our goal, let us see if ice can reach it. 

We take our point of departure at the question of possi- 
bility in God — is He a being passible, or impassible? 

It would seem to follow from tlie infinitude of his cre- 
atively efficient power, and the immensity of his nature, 
that he is and must be impassible. There is, in fact, no 
power that is not in his hands. There are cases, it is true, 
where superiority in volume and physical farce rather 
increases than diminishes passibility. Thus it is that man 
is subject to so great annoyance from the mere gnat, and 
the creature is able to inflict this inevitable suffering upon 
him, just because of his own atomic littleness. But there 
is no parallel in this for the relation of God to his crea- 
tures, or of theirs to Him ; because they continue to exist 
only by His permission. Besides, He is spirit only, not a 
being that can be struck, or thrust upon, or any way vio- 
lated by physical assault. What we call force, or physical 
power can not touch him. And even if it could, he is 
probably incapable of suffering from it, as truly as even 
space itself. Like space, like eternity, he is, in his own 
nature, as spirit, essentially impassible — impassible, that 
is, as related to force. 

But the inquiry is not ended when we reach this point, 
it is only begun. After all there must be some kind of 
passibleness in God, else there could be no genuine char- 
acter in him. If he could not be pained by any thing, 
could not suffer any kind of wound, had no violable sym- 
pathy, he would be any thing but a perfect character. A 
cast iron Deity could not command our love and reverence. 



348 THE POWER OF GOD 

The beauty of God is that he has feeling and feels appio- 
priatel y toward everything done; that he feels badness as 
badness, and goodness as goodness, pained by one, pleased 
by the other. There must be so much/ or such kind of 
passibility in him that he will feel toward every thing aa 
it is, and will be diversely affected by diverse things, ac- 
cording to their quality. If wickedness and wrong stirred 
nothing in him different from what is stirred by a praj^er, 
if He felt no disaffection toward a thief which He does not 
feel toward a martyr, no pleasure in a martyr faithful unto 
death, which He does not in his persecutors, He would be a 
kind of no-character; we can hardly conceive such a being. 

A very large share of all the virtues have, in fact, an 
element of passivity, or passibility in them, and without 
that element they could, not exist. Indeed the greatness 
and power of character, culminates in the right proportion 
aad co-ordination of these passive elements. And just 
here it is, we shall see, that even God's perfection culmin- 
ates. He is great as being great in feeling. 

We raise a distinction, as among ourselves, between 
what we call the active and the passive virtues. Not thai 
all virtues are not equally active, in the sense of being 
voluntary, or free, but that in some of them we communi- 
cate, and in some of them receive action. If I impart a 
charity, that is my active virtue ; if I receive an insult 
without revenging, or wishing to revenge it, that is my 
passive virtue. All the wrong acts done us and also all 
the good are occasions of some appropriate, proportionate 
and really great feeling, which is our passive virtue. And 
without this passive virtue in its varieties, we should be 
only no-characters, dry logs of wood instead of Christian 
men. Or, if we kept on acting still, we should be only 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE 849 

active machines, equally dry as wood, and only making 
more of noise ; for what better is the active giving of a 
charity, if there be no fellow-feeling, or pitying passion 
with it, to make it a charity? 

Now God must have these passive virtues as truly aa 
men. They are the necessary soul of all greatness in him. 
flow then shall we conceive him to have them and to have 
his sublime perfection culminate in them, when he is, in 
fact, impassible? 

This brings us to the true point of our question. "We 
discover, first, that God is and must be physically impas- 
sible. We discover, next, that he ought to feel appropri- 
ately to all kinds of action, and must have, in order to his 
real greatness in character, all the passive virtues. He 
must in one view be impassible and in some other, pas- 
sible, infinitely passible. And how is this, where is the 
solution ? 

It is here ; that God, being physically impassible, im- 
passible as relates to violating force, is yet morally passi- 
ble. That is, he is a being whose very perfection it is, 
that he feels the moral significance of things, receives all 
actions according to their moral import, whether as done 
to himself, or by one created being to another. In this 
latter sense, he feels actions intensely according to the 
moral delicacy of his nature, deeply according to the 
depth of his nature. In this point of view, he is, just be^ 
cause he is perfect ana infinite, infinitely passible. He lias 
just that sense of things which infinite holiness must have, 
loves the tears of repentance in his child just as infinite 
mercy must, turns away from all wrong, as profoundly 
revolted by it, as his infinite, eternal chastity must be. 

30 



850 THE POWER OF GOB 

It will be seen, at once, that God can receive the sense 
of actions morally, in this manner, when they can not 
touch him as force or physically. He can feel ingratitude 
when he can not feel a blow. He can loathe impurity 
when he can not be injured by any assault. He can be 
sore displeased by the cruelty of man to his fellow, when 
he could not. suffer the cruelty himself. He is pleased and 
gratified by acts of sacrifice when he could not be com- 
forted, or enriched by the ministries of benevolence. All 
acts affect him just according to their quality. A ther- 
mometer is not more exactly and delicately passive to 
heat, than he is to the merit and demerit of all actions. 
So, as regards what lies in character and pertains in that 
way to spirit, he is the most intensely passible of all be- 
ings, and has it for his merit that he is. 

This, accordingly, is the representation given of him in 
the scriptures, or, as it will more assist my subject to say, 
in the Old Testament scriptures. Thus he is blessed, or 
said to be, in all the varieties of agreeable affection, ac- 
cording to the merit and beauty of whatever is done that 
is right. He smelled a sweet savor, we are told, in Noah's 
sacrifice. He has pleasure in them that hope in his mercy. 
He is affected with joy over his people, as a prophet repre- 
sents, even to singing, in the day of their restored peace. 
He is tender in his feeling to the obedient, pitying them 
that fear him as a father pitieth his children. His very 
love is partly passive ; that is, it is a being affected with 
complacency by those who are in the truth, and a being 
affected with compassion by the bitter and hard lot of 
those under sin. On the other hand, by how many un- 
pleasant varieties, or pains of feeling does he profess to 
suffer, in his relation to scenes of human wrong, ingrati- 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE. 351 

fcude and disgusting baseness. The sighing of the prisoner 
comes before him, to command his sympathy. He calls 
after his people, as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit. 
He testifiespl am pressed under you as a cart is pressed 
that is full of sheaves. His reper tings are kindled together 
111 view of the sins of his people. In all the afflictions of 
his people he is afflicted himself. And, in the same man- 
ner, he is said to be exercised by all manner of disagree- 
able and unpleasant sentiments in relation to all manner 
of evil doings; displeased, sore displeased, wroth, angry, 
loathing, abhorring, despising, hating, weary, filled with 
abomination, wounded, hurt, grieved, and even protests, 
like one sorrowing, that he could do nothing more for his 
vineyard that he has not done in it. There is, in short, no 
end to the variety of unhappy, or disagreeable sentiments 
that must be excited in God's breast of infinite purity, by 
the various complexities of guilt, wrong, shame and loath- 
someness that are blended in the societies and scenes of 
our fallen world. If God could look on these things with- 
out disgust and abhorrence, he would not be God. He 
would want all that is most amiable, freshest, most deli- 
cate, purest in love, every thing that most commends him 
to our reverence. 

But these movings of disgust and abhorrence, all these 
sentiments that put him in a just relation with evil, are 
painful. Simpty to say that one is displeased is to say 
that he is disagreeably affected ; or merely to say that one 
dislikes a character is to allege that he is unpleasantly 
affected by it. What then shall we think of God, when 
all these varieties of displeasure and dislike must as cer- 
tainly oe living experiences in him, as he is a holy and a 



852 THE POWER OF GOD 

living God? So far he is a being subject to pain, bv 
reason of bis very perfections. Nay, bis pains do tbem 
selves enter into and make up a consubstantial part ol 
bis perfections. 

And what is this, some will ask, but to assume the un- 
happiness, or, at least, the diminished happiness, of (rod 
Is then God unhappy? Js he less than infinitely blessed? 
Pressed by this difficulty, it has been the manner of many 
teachers to fall back on the physical impassibility of God, 
imagining that there, at that fixed point, the true solution 
must begin. God, they say, is impassible. We are there- 
fore to understand that, in all these scripture expressions, 
these abhorrings, loathings, hatings, displeasures, angers, 
wearinesses, indignations, and the like, the bible is only 
speaking of God after the manner of men. Yes, but, 
supposing it to thus speak, what does it mean ? Does it 
mean nothing? When it declares that God abominates 
sin, does it mean that he has no feeling at all in respect to 
it ? Does it mean that he has a pleasant or pleased feeling? 
Neither ; we mock the dignity of scripture, nay we mock 
the beauty itself of God, when we turn away, in this man- 
ner, all credit of right feeling and true rationality in Him 
No, this is what we mean ; we mean, if we understand 
ourselves, that the figures in question, are transferred 
from human uses and applied over to God; and that 
when so applied, they express something true concern- 
ing God; viz., the great fact that God has the same 
kind of displeased, disaffected, abhorrent and revolted 
feeling toward sin, as the purest and holiest man has, only 
it is God's feeling, in God's measures, and according to 
God's purity; that his disgust is deep as the sea, that his 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE. 353 

indignation is a storm vast as the world, that his whole 
infinitude is moved with dislike, distaste, disgust, offended 
purity, abhorrence and revolted love. It would even be 
a discredit to God to suppose any thing less. 

And so we come back on the difficulty, a hundred fold 
increased, and we ask again, how shall we save the infi- 
nite blessedness of God? By just dropping out our cal- 
culations of arithmetic, I answer, and looking at facts. It 
seems to be good arithmetic and logically inevitable that, 
if any subtraction is made from God's infinite happiness, 
he can not be infinitely happy. No, it is not inevitable. 
On the contrary, he may even be the more blessed be- 
cause of the subtraction, for to see that he feels rightly to- 
ward evil, despite of the pain suffered from it, to be con- 
scious of long suffering and patience toward it, to know 
that he is pouring and ever has been the fullness of his 
love upon it, to be studying now, in conscious sacrifice, 
a saving mercy ; — out of this springs up a joy deeper and 
more sovereign than the pain, and by a fixed law of holy 
compensation, the sea of his blessedness is kept continually 
full. All moral natures exist under this law of compen- 
sation ; so that every being is made more blessed in all the 
passive virtues. To receive evil rightly is to master it, to 
be rightly pained by it is to be kept in sovereign joy. To 
suffer well is bliss and victory. 

Probably no one ever thought of compassion as bemg 
anj thing less than a joy, a holy bliss of feeling. And 
yet it is co-passion. It suffers with its objects, takes their 
burdens, struggles with their sorrows — all which is pain, 
a loss of happiness. Still it is no loss, because there id 
another element in the 3onscious greatness of the loss, and 

30* 



354 THE POWER OF GOD 

the man is even raised in order bv trie inward exaltation 
he feels. So in respect to pity, long suffering, patience 
with evil, and meekness under wrong. They have all a 
eid 3 of loss, and yet they are the noblest augmentations 
of blessedness. There is a law of moral compensation in 
them all, by which their suffering is married to inevitable 

IS or is this fact of compensation wholly confined to ac- 
tions moral ; a similar return keeps company with loss and 
is expected to do so in other matters. The hearer of a 
tragedy, for example, goes to be afflicted, to have his soul 
harrowed and torn, that in so deep excitement he may feel 
the depth of his nature, and be exalted in the powerful 
surging of its waves ! He suffers a great subtraction, but 
no diminution. 

TTe need not therefore be troubled or concerned for 
God's happiness, because he feels toward evil, and with all 
his feeling, exactly as he should. That, if only we can 
drop the stupid computations of arithmetic and look into 
the living order of mind, or spirit, is the sublimity even of 
his blessedness, as it is the necessary grace of his perfection. 

Thus far I have spoken of God's passive virtue, princi- 
pally as concerned in feeling toward what is moral just 
according to its quality; in being affected pleasantly, or 
disagreeably according to the good or evil of what he 
looks upon. But there is a moral passivity in all perfect 
character that is vastly higher than this and reaches far- 
ther; viz., a passivity of mercy, or sacrifice. In this, a 
good, or perfect being not only feels toward good, or evil, 
according to what it is, but willingly endures evil, or submita 
to its bad quality and action to make it what it is not; to 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE. 355 

recover and heal it. ISTo extraordinary purity is necessary 
to make any one sensible of disaffection, or disgust, 01 
pain, in the contemplation of what is vile and wicked ; but 
to submit one's ease and even one's personal comfort and 
pleasure to the endurance of wickedness, in order to re- 
cover and subdue it, requires what is far more difficult. I 
can be disgusted easily enough, by the ingratitude, offended 
by the treachery, wounded by the wrongs of an enemy, 
but to bear that enemy and put myself in the way of re- 
ceiving more injury, in order to regain his friendship and 
restore him to a right feeling, is quite another matter. I 
am never perfect in my relation to him till I can. All 
perfect virtue will do this, and none is perfect but this, 
whether in man, or in angel, or in God. 

Just here then, we begin to open upon the true mean- 
ing of my text — Christ the power of God. There is no 
so great power even among men, as this of which I now 
speak. It conquers evil by enduring evil. It takes the 
rage of its enemy and lets him break his malignity across 
the enduring meekness of its violated love. Just here it 
is that evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue 
against every thing but suffering patience; this disarms it. 
Looking in the face of suffering patience it sinks exhausted. 
All its fire is spent. 

In this view it is that Christ crucified is the power of 
God. It is because he shows God in self-sacrifice, because he 
brings out and makes historical in the world God's passive 
virtue, which is, in fact, the culminating head of power in 
his character. By this it is that he opens our human feel- 
ing, bad and blind as it is, pouring himself into its deep- 
est recesses and bathing it with his cleansing, new-creating 
influence. There is even a kind of efficiency in it and 



856 THE POWER OF GOD 

that the highest, viz., moral efficiencj^; for it is moral 
power, not physical, not force. It is that kind of power 
which feeling has to impregnate feeling ; that which one 
person has in good, to melt himself into and assimilate 
another in evil. Hence it is that so much is said of Christ 
as a new-discovered power — the power of God unto salva- 
tion ; the Son of God with power ; the power of Christ ; 
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. The 
power spoken of here is conceived to be such that Christ 
is really our new creator. We are his workmanship cre- 
ated unto good works; new creatures therefore in him, 
transformed radically by our faith in him, passed from 
death unto life, born of God, renewed in the spirit of our 
mind, created after God in righteousness and true holiness. 
All the figures of cleansing, sprinkling, washing, healing, 
purging, terminate in the same thing, the new creating 
efficacy of Christ, the power of God. It is the power of 
character, feeling, a right passivity, a culminating grace 
of sacrifice in God. 

But how does it appear that any so great efficacy is ad- 
ded to the known character of God, by the life and death 
of Christ ? Was not every thing shown us in his death 
explicitly revealed, or, in language, formally ascribed to 
God, by the writers of the Old Testament ? God, I have 
already shown, was certainly represented there as being 
duly affected by all evil ; that is, he was shown to be af- 
fected according to its true nature ; displeased, abhorrent, 
hurt, afflicted, offended in purity, burdened with grief and 
compassion. But to have these things said, or ascribed 
formally to God, is one thing, and a very different to have 
them lived and acted historically in the world. Perfec- 
tions that are set before us in mere epithets have little 






IX SELF-SACRIFICE. 357 

significance, no significance but that which we give thena 
by thinking them out. But perfections lived, embodied 
physically, and acted before the senses, under social condi- 
tions, have quite another grade of meaning. How much 
then does it signify when God comes out from nature, out 
of all abstractions and abstractive epithets, to be acted 
personally in just those glorious and divine passivities thai 
we have least discerned in him and scarcely dare impute 
to him. Bv what other method can he meet us then, so 
entirely new and superior to all past revelations, as to come 
into our world-history in the human form; that organ most 
eloquent in its passivity, because it is, at once, most ex- 
pressive and closest to our feeling. 

And if this be true respecting God's mere passivities of 
sensibility to right and wrong, how much truer is it, when 
we speak of him in sacrifice. Xo such impression, or con- 
ception of God was ever drawn out, as a truth positive, 
from any of the epithets we have cited. And what we 
call nature gives it no complexion of evidence. Nature 
represents inexorable force, a God omnipotent, self-cen- 
tered, majestic, infinite and, as almost any one will judge, 
impassible. Such are the impressions it gives and it en- 
courages no other. We could almost as soon look for 
sacrifice in a steam-engine as in nature. The only hint of 
aible relaxation we get from it is that which we bor- 
row from the delay of punishment ; for this one thing is 
clear, that justice here is not done, and therefore we 
may guess that other ideas enter into God's plan?. So 
strongly opposite, therefore, is nature to any con 
tion of flexibility in God, that we are continually put 
away from Christianity by i1 - _ stiona So closely 
liolden are we by its power, that God, as in sacrifice, appears 



358 THE POWER OF GOD 

to be quite inconceivable to many of us, even though we 
look on the passion of the Lord Jesus itself. 

To know him thus, we therefore need the more. If ilt-e 
Old Testament gives us only verbal epithets concerning 
God, and nature sets us off from the conception of any 
real passivity in these, how necessary, original, powerful, 
is the God of sacrifice, he that endures evil and takes it as 
a burden to bear, when we see him struggling under tho 
load. And if still we can not believe, if we reduce our 
God in speculation still to a dry, unmoving, negative per- 
fection, which escapes suffering by feeling nothing as it is, 
only the more wonderful is the power that can be a power 
so great upon us, when obstructed by such unbelief. Still 
the fact is fact — the Christ has lived, his great and 
mighty passion has entered into the world, and we do get 
impressions from it, even when we are shutting its most 
central truth away. Somewhere still there is, (how often 
do we say it) a wondrous power hid in the cross I It pene- 
trates our deepest nature; and when our notional wisdoms 
are, at some time, left behind, when we are merely holding 
the historic fact in practical trust unexplained, nothing 
meets our feeling so well as to call it the great mystery of 
godliness. We do it because we feel a somewhat in it 
more than we can reason out of it ; because it penetrates 
and works in our deepest nature, with a wondrous incom- 
prehensible efficacy. 

But in all this we are supposing that Christ suffered and 
that he is indeed the incarnate Word of God's eternity — 
God manifest in the flesh. And the suffering is, by the 
supposition, physical — a suffering under force. If then 
God is in his very nature physically impassible, as we have 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE. 359 

said, how does it appear that he is any way expressed in 
the passion of Christ, how does the passion present him aa 
in sacrifice? Ah, that is a difficulty! I confess, in all 
humility, that I can not reason it. I can only so far an- 
swer as to make out a case for faith, unobstructed by the 
veto of reason. 

And, first of all, it is not asserted, when we assert the 
physical impassibility of God, that he can not suffer by 
consent, or self-subjection, but only that he can not be sub- 
jected involuntarily. We know nothing of the liberty pos- 
sessed by the divine nature, to exist under assumed con- 
ditions, whenever there are any sufficient reasons for so 
doing. To deny that God has such kind of liberty in 
the Word, might even be a greater infringement of his 
power, than to maintain his natural passibility. 

In the next place, we can clearly enough see that there 
is no difficulty in the passion of Christ which does not 
also exist in the incarnation itself. It is indeed the incar- 
nation, or one of the included incidents. And the incarna- 
tion is, by the supposition, a fact abnormal, inconceivable, 
speculatively impossible. How can the infinite being, 
God, exist under finite conditions ; how can the All-Pres- 
ent be localized ; how (for that is only another form of 
the same question) can the impassible suffer? And yet it 
would be a most severe assumption to say that God can 
not, to express himself and forward his negotiation with 
sin, subject himself, in some way mysteriously qualified, 
to just these impossible conditions. 

Bs this all as it may, there are ways of knowing and per- 
ceiving that are shorter, and, in many things, wiser than 
the processes of the head. In this passion of Jesus, it must 
be enough that I look on the travail of a divine feeling, 



360 THE POWER OF GOD 

and behold the spectacle of God in sacrifice. This I see 
and nothing less. He is visibly not a man. His character 
is not of this world. I feel a divinity in him. He floods 
me with a sense of God, such as I receive not from all 
God's works and worlds beside. And when I stand by 
his cross, when I look on that strong passion and shudder 
with the shuddering earth, and darken with the darken- 
ing sun, enough that I can say — My Lord and my God! 
I ask no sanction of the head. I want no logical 
endorsement. Enough that I can see the heart of God, 
and, in all this wondrous passion, know him as enduring 
the contradiction of sinners. No matter if I can not 
reason the mystery ; no matter if the whole transaction is 
a doing of the impossible, when so plainly the impossible 
is done! when I have the irresistible verdict in me, self- 
pronounced! Why should I debate the matter in my 
head, when I have the God of sacrifice in my heart ? I 
will give up my sins. He that endures me so, subdues 
me, and I yield. thou Lamb of God that takest away 
the sin of the world, what thou bearest in thy blessed 
hands and feet, I can not bear ; take it all away. Hide 
me in the depths of thy suffering love, mold me to the 
image of thy divine passion ! 

Here now, my friends, and at this point I close ; here 
let us learn to conceive more fitly the greatness of God. 
His greatness culminates in sacrifice. He is great, because 
there is a moral passivity so great in his perfections. All 
which the cross of Jesus signifies was central, eternally, in 
his majestic character. Nothing superlative is here dis- 
played, nothing is done which adds so much as a trace to 
God's personal glories. All that is done is simply to 



IN SELF-SACRIFICE. 361 

express, or produce in real evidence, what his glories were 
from eternity. All that is discovered to us in the passion 
was in him from eternitj^. The cross was the crown 
of his perfection before the worlds were made. He was 
such a being as could feel toward evil and good accord- 
ing to what they are , such a being, too, as could suffer an 
enemy, endure his wrong in royal magnanimity, and sub- 
due him by his patience. 0, if he were only wise, om- 
nipotent, a great architect piling immensity full of his 
works, fixed in his eternity, strong in his justice, firm in 
his decrees, that were doubtless something; even that 
would piesent him as an object worthy of profoundest 
reverence ; but in the passion of Jesus he is more. There 
his power is force ; here it is sacrifice. There he creates 
by his fiat ; here he new-creates by the revelation of sacri- 
fice. There he astonishes the eye ; here he touches and 
transforms the heart. Is it wrong to say that here is the 
summit of his greatness? Were he, then, the mere ideal 
that figures in our new literature, some great no-person, 
some vast To Pan sleeping back of the stars ; some clear 
fluid of impersonal reason, in which both we and the stars 
are floating, having neither will nor feeling; a form of 
stolidity made infinite ; would he be a greater being, more 
admirable, warmer to our love, and worthier to be had in 
reverence? 0, these great passibilities ! this sorrowing 
love ! this enduring patience that bears the sins of the 
world ! He that groans in the agony, he that thirsts on 
the cross, this is the real and true, — the Lord he is the 
Godl the Lord he is the God! The God of mere ampli- 
tude will do to amuse the fancy of the ingenious; the 
God of sacrifice only can approve himself to a sinner. 
And here it is that our gospel comes to be 30 great a 

31 



362 THE POWER OF GOD 

power. It is not, on one hand, the power of omnipotence^ 
or of a naked, ictic force, falling in secretly regenerative 
blows, like a slung shot in the night. Neither is it, on the 
other hand, any mere appeal of gratitude, or newly im- 
pressed obligation, drawing the soul to God by the consid 
eration of what he has done, in the cross, to purchase a 
free remission. Bonds of gratitude, alas ! have never 
been so great a power on human souls. And how does it 
appear that any such bond has been even admitted, when 
as yet the remission itself is rejected and the want of it 
unfelt? No! this power, this wonderful power I is God 
in sacrifice. It is measured and expressed and incor- 
porated in the historic life of the world as a power new- 
creative in the passion of Jesus, the incarnate "Word of 
God ; for it is here that God pours out into the world's 
bosom his otherwise transcendent perfections, and opens, 
even to sight, the otherwise inaccessible glories of his love, 
It is even the official work, therefore, and mission of the 
Holy Spirit to be Christ in men, taking the things of 
Christ's passion and showing them unto men's hearts; 
for Christ, himself is, in his sacrifice, the mighty power of 
God. This is the power that has new-created and sent 
home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted 
myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls; the 
power that established, propagates, perpetuates, a king- 
dom ; the power that has tamed how much of enmity, 
dissolved how many times the rock of obstinacy, cleansed, 
purified, restored to heaven's order, comforted in heaven's 
peace how many guilty, otherwise despairing souls. It 
can do for you, O sinner of mankind ! all that you want 
done. It can regenerate your habits, settle your disor- 
ders, glorify your baseness, and assimilate you perfectly 



IN SELF-SACKIF1CE. 363 

to God. This it will do for yon. Go to the cross, and 
meet there God in sacrifice. Behold him, as Jesus, bear- 
ing your sin, receiving the shafts of your enmity ! Em- 
brace Him, believe in Him, take Him to your inmost 
heart. Do this, and you shall feel sin die within you, and 
a glorious quickening, Christ the power of God, Christ in 
you the hope of glory, shall be consciously risen upon 
you, as the morn of your new creation. 

And you, my brethren that have known this dawning of 
the Lord — what a certification have you, in this sacrifice, 
of God's sympathy. How intensely personal is he to you. 
Go to him in your every trouble. Go to him most confi- 
dently in all the troubles of your inward shame, and the 
struggles even of your defeated hope. When the loads 
of conscious sin are heaviest on you, and you seem even 
to be sinking in its mires, address him as the God of sacri- 
fice. Have it also as your lesson, that you yourself will 
be most in power, when readiest in the enduring of evil ; 
that you will bear fruit and be strong, not by your force, 
not by your address, not by your words, but only when 
you are with Christ in sacrifice. Strange that any one 
who has ever once felt the power of God in Christ, should, 
for so much as a moment, miss or fall out of this glorious 
truth. It comes of that delusion of our selfishness, which 
is, in fact, a second nature in us, — the seeing only weak 
ness in patience, and loss in sacrifice. But if God's 
own might and blessing are in it, so also are yours. 
Look for power, look for the fullness of joy where Christ 
himself reveals it. Take his cross, that same which ho 
brought forth out of the bosom of God's eternal perfec- 
tions, and go back with him in it, to be glorified with 
bim, in the hight of his beatitude. 



XIX, 

DUTY N"OT MEASURED BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 

Luke ix. 13. — "But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat: 3 

When Christ lays it thus upon his disciples, in that 
solitary and desert place, to feed five thousand men, he 
can not be ignorant of the utter impossibility that they 
should do it. And when they reply that they have only 
five loaves and two fishes, though the answer is plainly 
sufficient he is nowise diverted from his course by it, but 
presses directly on in the new order, that they make the 
people sit down by fifties in a company, and be ready for 
the proposed repast. Debating in themselves, probably, 
what can be the use of such a proceeding, when really 
there is no supply of food to be distributed, they still 
execute his order. And then when all is made ready, he 
calls for the five loaves and two fishes, and, having blessed 
them, begins to break, and says to them — Distribute. 
Marvelous loaves ! broken, they are not diminished ! dis- 
tributed, they still remain ! And so returning, again and 
again, to replenish their baskets, they continue the distri- 
bution, till the hungry multitude are all satisfied as in a 
full supply. In this manner the original command — Give 
ye them to eat — is executed to the letter. They have 
made the people sit down, they have brought the loaves, 
they have distributed, and he at every step has justified 
his order, by making their scanty stock as good as a full 
supply. 



DUTY NOT MEASURED, ETC. 365 

This narrative suggests and illustrates the following 
important principle — 

That men are often, and properly, put under obligation to 
do that for which they have, in themselves, no present ability. 

This principle I advance, not as questioning the truth 
that ability, being necessary to an act, is necessary to com- 
plete obligation toward the same, but as believing and 
designing to show that God has made provision, in very 
many things, for the coming in upon the subject of ability, 
as he goes forward to execute the duties incumbent on 
him. God requires no man to do, without ability to do ; 
but he does not limit his requirement by the measures of 
previous or inherently contained ability. In many, 01 
even in a majority of cases, the endowment of power is 
to come after the obligation, occurring step by step, as the 
exigences demand. Of what benefit is it that the subject 
have a complete ability in himself, provided he only has 
it where and when it is wanted? When, therefore, I 
maintain that men are often required to do that for which 
they have no present ability in themselves, I do it in the 
conviction that God has made provision, in many ways, 
for the enlargement of our means and powers so as to 
meet our emergencies. And he does this, we shall see, on 
a large scale, and by system, — does it in the natural life, 
and also in the works and experiences of the life of faith. 

Thus, to begin at the very lowest point of the subject, 
it is the nature of human strength and fortitude bodily to 
have an elastic measure, and to be so let forth or extended 
as to meet the exigences that arise. Within certain 
limits, for man is limited in every thing, the body gets thg 

31* 



866 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

strength it wants, in the exercise for which it is wanted 
The body is not like mechanical tools and engines, which 
never acquire any degree of strength by use and the strain 
to which they are put, but rather begin to fail as they 
begin to be used ; but it gains power for exertion by exer- 
tion, and sustains its competency in the same way. It is 
able to endure and conquer, because it has endured and 
conquered. God, therefore, may fitly call a given man to 
a course of life that requires much robustness and a high 
power of physical endurance, on the ground that when he 
is fully embarked in his calling, the robustness will come, 
or will be developed in it and by means of it, though pre- 
viously it seemed not to exist. Indeed the physical imbe- 
cility of some men will be the great crime of their life, 
and they will be held answerable for it, on the simple 
ground that they had too little courage and were too self- 
indulgent to throw themselves on any such undertaking, 
as a true christian manliness required. 

There is yet another law pertaining to bodily capacity, 
which is more remarkable, viz., that muscular strength 
and endurance are often suddenly created or supplied by 
some great emergency for which they are wanted. What 
feats of giant strength have been performed under the 
stimulus of danger, or some impulse of humanity or affec- 
tion. What sufferings have men supported in prisons, in 
deserts, on the ocean, sustained by hope, or nerved by 
despair. When the occasion is passed, and the man looks 
back upon the scene, how impossible does it seem that he 
Bhouid ever have done or suffered such things! It is 
indeed impossible to do it now. But then it was possible, 
in virtue of a great appointment of nature and provi- 
dence, by which the very occasions to be met shall so 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. S67 

excite the nerves of action as to give us power to meet 
them. They do it suddenly and just for the time. In an 
instant, they endue us with what appears to ourselves to 
be preternatural strength ; and when the great exigency 
is over, vanquished by the very powers it has itself sup- 
plied we sit down to rejoice in a tremor of weakness. 

So also it is the nature of courage to increase in the 
midst of perils and because of them, and courage is the 
Btrength of the heart. Often does the coward even become 
a hero by the accident of condition. How a man is able 
not seldom to proceed with firmness and heroic self-posses- 
sion, when thrown amid difficult and perilous exposures or 
conflicts, who by no effort of courage could bring himself 
to engage in them, is well understood. Nor is it any 
thing strange for a woman, in some terrible and sudden 
crisis, to be nerved with firmness and dauntless self-pos- 
session, — then even to faint with terror when the crisis is 
past ! 

Intellectual force too has the same elastic quality, and 
measures itself in the same way, by the exigences we are 
called to meet. Task it, and, for that very reason, it 
grows efficient. Plunge it into darkness, and it makes a 
sphere of light. It discovers its own force, by the exer- 
tion of force, measures its capacity by the difficulties it 
has overcome, its appetite for labor by the labor it has 
endured. So that here again, as in respect to the body, a 
man may have it laid upon him to be forward in some 
greatest call of duty, when as yet he seems to have no 
capacity for it; on the ground that his capacity will so be 
unfolded as to meet the measures of his undertaking. 
How many persons who thought they had no ability to 
teach a class of youth in the scriptures, have gotten their 



888 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

ability by doing it. And just so all great commander^ 
statesmen, lawgivers, scholars, preachers, have found the 
powers unfolded in their calling and by it, which were 
necessary for it. 

Here too great occasions beget great powers, and pre- 
pare the man to astonishing, almost preternatural acts of 
mental energy. In great occasions, when a principle, or 
a kingdom, or some holy cause of heaven is at stake, an 
inspiration seizes him, that fires the imagination, swells 
the high emotions, exalts and glorifies the will, and sends 
the spirit of the living creatures into every wheel of the 
mind before inert and lifeless. Thus electrified and pene 
trated by the great necessity, it becomes ethereal, rapid 
clear, a fire of energy, a resistless power. What reason 
ings, Vvliat bursts of eloquence, what living words of flame 
does it send forth to kindle and glow in the world's his 
tory, for generations and ages to come. 

The same also is true, quite as remarkably, of what wo 
sometimes call moral power. By this we mean the power 
of a life and a character, the power of good and great 
purposes, that power which comes at length to reside in a 
man distinguished in some course of estimable or great 
conduct. It is often this which dignifies the great senator, 
so as to make even his common words, words of grave 
wisdom, or perchance of high eloquence. It is this which 
gives a power so mysterious often to the preacher of 
Christ, such a power that even his presence in any place 
will begin to disturb the conscience of many, even before 
they have heard him. No other power of man compares 
with this, and there is no individual who may not be 
measurably invested with it. Integrity, purity, goodness. 
success of any kind in the humblest persons, or the lowest 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 369 

vraiks of duty, begin to invest them finally with a char- 
acter, and create a certain sense of momentum in them. 
Other men expect them to get on, because they are getting 
on, and bring them a repute that sets them forward, give 
them a salute that means — success ! This kind of powe* 
is neither a natural gift, nor properly an acquisition, but 
i; comes in upon one and settles on him, like a crown of 
glory, while discharging with fidelity his duties to God 
and man. It is a power contributed silently by others, a 
throne built for the victor, an eminence appointed him by 
the world. When contemplated in this light, how marked 
is the provision of God for letting down power upon a 
man, who will act his part well. The world comes to him, 
of its own accord, to exalt him with its tributary breath. 

And here again, also, it is to be noted that the power in 
question, this moral power, is often suddenly enlarged by 
the very occasions that call for it. Not seldom is it a fact 
that the very difficulty and grandeur of a design, which 
some heroic soul has undertaken to execute, exalts him, 
at once, to such a pre-eminence of moral power, that man- 
kind are exalted with him, and inspired with energy and 
confidence by the contemplation of his magnificent spirit. 
How often indeed is a man able to carry a project, simply 
because he has made it so grand a project ! lie strikes, in- 
spires, calls to his aid, by virtue of his great idea, his faith, 
his sublime confidence in truth, or justice, or duty. 

It is only a part, or rather a generalization of the truths 
already illustrated, that the great and successful men of 
history are commonly made by the great occasions they 
fill. They are the men who had faith to meet such occa- 
sions, and therefore the occasions marked them, called 
them to come and be what the successes of their faith 



370 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

would make them. The boy is but a shepherd, but lie 
hears from his panic-stricken countrymen of the giant 
champion of their enemies. A fire siezes him, and he 
goes down, with nothing but his sling and his heart of 
faith, to lay that champion in the dust. Next he is a great 
military leader ; next the king of his country. As with 
David, so with Nehemiah, — as with him, so with Paul, — as 
with him, so with Luther. A Socrates, a Tully, a Crom- 
well, a Washington, — all the great master spirits, the 
founders and law-givers of empires, and defenders of the 
rights of man, are made by the same law. These did not 
shrink despairingly within the compass of their poor abil- 
ities, but in their heart of faith, they embraced each one 
his cause, and went forth, under the inspiring force of 
their call, to apprehend that for which they were appre- 
hended. They had all their enemies and their obstacles, 
such enemies and obstacles as they had in themselves no 
force to conquer. But their confidence in their cause gave 
them a force. For, as it is said that ferocious animals are 
disarmed by the eye of man, and will dare no violence ; 
if he but steadily look at them, so it is when right looks 
upon wrong. Eesist the devil, and he will flee from you ; 
offer him a bold front, and he runs away. He goes, it 
may be, uttering threats of rage, but yet he goes ! So it 
is that all the great, efficient men of the world are made. 
They are not strong, but out of weakness they are made 
Strong. 

1 have dwelt thus at length on these illustrations that 
are offered us in the natural life, simply because they will, 
for that reason, be most convincing to many. You see, as 
a fact, that the ability we have to suffer and do and con- 






BY OUR OWN ABILITY, 371 

quer, is never an ability previously existing in ourselves. 
It is an ability that accrues, or comes upon us, in the exi- 
gences and occasions of life. How childish then is it in 
religion, to imagine that we are called to do nothing, save 
what we have ability to do beforehand ; ability in ourselves 
to do. We have in fact no such ability at all — no ability 
that is inherent, as respects any thing laid upon us to do ; 
our ability is what we can have, and then our duty is 
graduated by what we can have. Indeed we may affirm 
it as a truth universal, respecting vital natures of every 
kind, whether vegetable, animal, intellectual, or spiritual, 
that they have no rigidly inherent ability to do any thing 
whatever. No plant or tree can grow by any inherent 
ability, apart from sun, soil, moisture, heat, and the like. 
No animal can do as simple a thing as breathing by inhe- 
rent ability, — he must have air; he can walk, or run, or 
climb, or fly, only by conditions external that must be 
supplied. So also the mind or intelligence can remember 
only as fit associations are supplied to assist the recall of 
things gone by ; or discover laws, only when stimulated 
by the suggestions of appropriate facts ; or maintain a 
power of high command, only when there are great occa- 
sions and perils to be mastered. In just the same way, 
passing to what is spiritual, God can not be loved, save as 
he is offered to love, in qualities that will awaken and sup- 
port love. Ana, for the same reason, no sinner of man- 
kind can regenerate himself by any inherent ability, apart 
from conditions powerfully presenting God, and pouring 
his radiance into the soul ; for the regenerate state is only 
the new revelation of God within, whence before he was 
excluded; so that now the life proceeds from, Him, aa its 
actuating impulse and law. 



372 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

Tins whole question of ability in man ; of natural abil- 
ity as opposed to moral inability, or qualified by it : of 
gracious ability, as a substitute for natural, or the equiva- 
lent of its restoration ; is the discussion of a false issue, 
which consequently never can be settled. For tnere is 
really no such thing and never was, as an ability to holi- 
ness, or moral perfection, that is inherent. If we speak 
of natural ability to good, a soul has no more natural 
ability to maintain the state of perfect goodness, than a 
tree to grow without light, or heat, or moisture. Depend- 
ence is the condition of all true holiness, even in sinless 
minds, if such there be. They feed on what their God 
supplies, they are radiant with his light, they are warm 
by his heat, they are blessed and exalted by the participa- 
tion of his beatitude ; nay, his all-moving Spirit is the 
conserving and sustaining life of their perfections. So if 
we speak of a gracious ability given to souls under sin, 
conceiving that it is some common bestowment given to 
raise them up into a plane of freedom, or the possibility 
of a new life, which gracious ability is a something inhe- 
rent and precedent to the obligations of repentance, that 
also is a pure fiction ; no such ability is given, and none 
is wanted. All such inventions are unnecessary ; as also 
all the supposed difficulties involved in the reconciling of 
responsibility and dependence, — they are all superseded 
and forever passed by, the moment we discover and fully 
come into the truth that all our powers and responsibili- 
ties are completed in and by our conditions ; or, what is 
the same, by God's arrangements to bring in increments 
of grace and impulse of all kinds, just when they are 
wanted. There is no difficulty here which is not found 
in all those examples which have been already cited frony 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 87b 

the natural life ; for God has arranged, in the spiritual or 
Bupernatural, to administer helps of grace, occasions, im- 
pulses, and secret ministries of love, so as to complete our 
possibilities and keep us in bonds of obligation to do con- 
tinually what we can as little do, without such conspiring 
helps, as we can breathe without air, or maintain life 
without breathing. 

This, it will accordingly be found, is the Christian doc- 
trine everywhere. Christianity has no conception of any 
such thing as a holy virtue wrought out and maintained 
by a responsible agent, acting from his own center, as a 
self-centered and merely self-operative force, — holy virtue 
it conceives, even apart from sin, to be the drinking out 
of God's fullness, receiving and living in his deific im- 
pulse, and having even its finiteness complemented by 
His infinite wisdom and majesty. As little conception 
has it of something done to raise a fallen creature into 
some inherent capacity, or ability to choose freely, that so 
he may be made responsible for choice. It boldly, undis- 
guisedly declares to every human being under sin, that he 
has no complete power beforehand, as in reference to any 
thing really good. And then it calls him to good, on the 
express condition always, that he is to have powers, stim- 
ulants, increments, accruing as he wants them; that on 
these, or the promise of them, he may rest his faith and 
so go forward. It says to the struggling and misgiving 
penitent;— Let him take hold of my strength, that he may 
make peace with me, and he shall make peace with me. 
It calls every man to earnest and hopeful endeavor, by 
the consideration of an all-supporting grace that can not 
fail;— Work out salvation with fear and trembling; for it 

is God that worketh in you. It shows the Christian testi- 

32 



874 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

fying in sublimity of confidence;— "When I am weak, then 
am T strong, — I can do all things through. Christ which 
strengthened me. It promises the faithful man all the 
support needed for his exigences, as they rise, — They 
that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength ; they 
shall mount up on wings as eagles, they shall run and not 
be weary, they shall walk and not faint. It also estab- 
lishes, in a manner to comprehend every thing, a doctrine 
of Divine Concourse by the Holy Spirit, which carries in 
it the pledge of all accruing grace and light and might 
and holy impulsion;— Ask and ye shall receive, seek and 
ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened. Indeed the 
doctrine or fact of the Holy Spirit is only another way of 
generalizing the truth that God will co-work invigora- 
tively, correctively, and directively in all the good strug- 
gles of believing souls ; and so will bring in, at all times 
and junctures, those increments of power that are neces- 
sary to success. 

It might also be added that Christianity itself is a 
grand empowering force in souls, and is designed to be, — 
that when we were without strength, Christ died for us. 
For he came forth into the world groping in its darkness, 
as the brightness of the Father's glory, that the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of his 
great life and passion, might shine into our hearts. As 
when the returning sun of the spring warms out the 
torpid creatures, and sets them creeping forth, re-vitalized 
and re-empowered with life, so this Sun of Eighteousness 
quickens the benumbed perceptions and imparts new 
warmth to the dead affections, placing us in new condi- 
tions of power; where, as we more fully believe, and 
more faithfully work, we are ever to find new increments 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 375 

of light and help conspiring with us. It only remains in 
gathering up this summary of the Christian doctrine con- 
cerning ability, to say that, taken comprehensively, it is 
all included in that favorite and more than once asserted 
maxim of Christ;— For to him that hath shall be given, 
and he shall have more abundantly. In this maxim he 
affirms the truth that every man is to expect his incre- 
ments of power, just as they are wanted. 

In this very simple manner all the great speculative 
difficulties and supposed mysteries of freedom and de- 
pendence are dispatched in the New Testament. And it 
is a remarkable fact that no Christian there is ever found to 
be in any speculative trouble on this subject. It is never 
even so much as a question of curious debate. They see 
nothing wanted there but just to go into their places and 
take their responsibilities, and let God bear them out by 
his conspiring help, as they certainly know that he will. 
Paul came directly down upon the discovery that he had 
ability to will, as a matter of choice, and yet could not 
find how to perform ; but, instead of seeing any difficulty 
in such a condition, he only glories that in Christ and the 
Spirit he gets accruing helps that enable him both to will 
and to do. And just there, where he might have sunk 
himself in one of the abysses of theology, he begins, 
instead, to sing;— I thank God through Jesus Christ. 

I will only add chat all the simplest, most living, and 
most genuine Christians of our own time are such as rest 
their souls, day by day, on this confidence and promise of 
accruing power, and make themselves responsible, not for 
what they have in some inherent ability, but for what they 
can have, in their times of Bl ad peril, and in the con- 

tinual raising of their own personal quantity and power. 



376 DUTY NOT MEASURED 

They throw themselves on works wholly above their 
ability, and get accruing power in their works for others 
still higher and greater Instead of gathering in their 
souls timorously beforehand, upon the little sufficiency 
they iind in possession, they look upon the great world 
God has made, and all the greater world of the Saviour's 
kingdom in it, as being friendly and tributary, ready to 
pour in help, minister light, and strengthen them to vic- 
tory, just according to their faith. And so they grow in 
courage, confidence, personal volume, efficiency of every 
kind, and, instead of slinking into their graves out of im- 
potent lives, they lie down in the honors of heroes. 

• Let me express the hope, in closing this very important 
subject, that a class of persons who generally compose a 
large body in every christian assembly, will find their un- 
happy mistake corrected in it. I speak of such as make 
no beginning in the christian life, just because they want 
ability and assurance and all evidence given them before- 
hand. They would be quite ready to embark, if the voyage 
were as good as over. They can not put themselves on 
God's word, or trust him for any thing. They must be 
strong before they get strength. They must have evidence 
of discipleship before they dare to be disciples. They act 
upon no such principle in any of their worldly adventures. 
Here they get power by using it, throw themselves upon 
the water and learn to swim by swimming. Dismiss, I be- 
seech you, one and all, and that forever, this unpractical, 
this really unmanly timidity. Commit the keeping of your 
soul to God, as to a faithful Creator. Believe that he ia 
faithful, and love to trust him for his faithfulness. The 
pnoment you can let go your misgiving, spiritless habit 



BY OLE OWN ABILITY. 877 

and cast yourself on God, to go into your duty, you are 
free. If the wind is high, and the water looks deep, and 
you have no courage to venture on a holy life, behold 
Jesus coming to you, treading lightly on the crests of the 
billows, and he conies to say, — " It is I." What assurance 
more do you want after that ? 

But there is a more general use of this subject which 
demands our notice. There are two great errors which, 
though opposite to each other, are yet both corrected by 
the view I have been seeking to impress. The error, viz., 
of those who think the demands of the religious life so 
limited and trivial as to require but little care and small 
sacrifices ; and the error of those who look upon them as 
being so many and great that they are discouraged under 
them. The former class is the more numerous and gener- 
ally the more worthless. They are worldly disciples who 
have much christian delight, as they think, in magnifying 
salvation by grace. God, they suppose, will not be very 
exact with them ; for he is a gracious and long-suffering 
God, and does not expect much of man in the way of 
goodness or effect. They take a certain pleasure, for 
reasons more artful than they themselves suspect, in dwell- 
ing on the weakness of men and their deep dependence on 
God. This is their reverence they imagine, their humility ; 
yes, it is even a very considerable part of their religion. 
Of couise they undertake nothing, throw themselves upon 
no great work of duty. They are so respectful to their 
humaa weakness that they measure their obligations by it, 
and really undertake nothing that makes them feel theii 
weakness, or demands any gift of grace and power trans- 
cending it. 

32* 



378 



DUTY NOT MEASUKED 



How different is the view of duty that God entertains 
for us, and everywhere asserts in the scriptures. In his 
sight we are all under obligation continually to undertake 
and do what is above our power, and to have this as the 
acknowledged rule of our life. He requires of us to be 
doing what we shall feel, to be carrying loads of duty and 
responsibility and sacrifice, under which, as men, we must 
tremble and faint ; and so to be proving always that, to 
them that have no might, he increaseth strength. We are 
to undertake cheerfully and do with a- ready mind all 
which, under his provisions of nature and grace, we may 
become able to do. 

Feeble are we ? Yes, without God we are nothing. But 
what, by faith, every man may be, God requires him to be. 
This is the only christian idea of duty. Measure obliga- 
tion bv inherent ability ! No, my brethren, christian obli- 
gation has a very different measure. It is measured by the 
power that God will give us, measured by the gifts and 
possible increments of faith. And what a reckoning will 
it be for many of us, when Christ summons us to answer 
before him, under this law, not for what we were, but for 
what we might have been. Then how many of us possi- 
bly, that bore the name of Jesus, will find ourselves before 
God, as the mere residuary substances of a dry and fruit- 
less life ; without volume, without strength, or any proper 
christian manhood. The souls whom it was given us to 
lead to the Saviour are not there ; the religious societies 
we ought to have gathered, the temples of worship we 
ought to have erected and left as monuments of our fidelity, 
the charities we ouaht to have founded and consecrated to 

o 

the blessing of the coming ages ; — all these good things 
that we might have- done, and which God was ready to 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 379 

empower us for doing, nowhere appear. And is that the 
kind of reckoning in which we are to be accepted as good 
and faithful servants ? My brethren, God has little part 
with you, or you with him, in such a kind of life. A very 
delicate and critical question it is. whether you have any 
pan with him at all. That only is christian faith that lives 
in the power of faith , in that does its works, makes its 
sacrifices, sustains its hopes, and measures its holy obliga- 
tions. Almost every thing a Christian is to do for his 
times and the sphere in which he lives transcends his 
ability, and the very greatness and joy of his experience, 
shall I not say the reality also, consists in the fact that he 
is exalted above himself, and made a partaker, in his works, 
of a divine power, as in his character of the divine nature. 
He is a man who lives in God and by God is girded to 
his duties and his triumphs, — God in nature, God in the 
gospel, God in the Spirit, God in the plenitude of his 
promises. 

I named another error, that viz., of those who really 
think that the way of duty is too hard for them, who feint 
because the demands of God appear to be so high above 
their power. They forget, or overlook the provision God 
has made to bring in increments of power, and support 
them, in what appears to be too high for them. They hear 
the call, — give ye them to eat, and remember only their 
five loaves and two fishes, and what are these among so 
many? They seem not to nDticc, or, if they notice, not 
to believe, those words of promise by which God encour- 
ages and supports the insufficiency of men. Thus, if any 
one, tiying to make higher attainments and achieve some 
higher standing in religion, is overwhelmed with the in* 



380 DUTY NOT MLASUKED 

firmity and bitter evil of his own heart, and cries, — My 
iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able 
to look up ; what is there in such a discovery to break 
down his confidence ? Just there is the place for him to 
believe and begin to sing with Paul, — I thank God, through 
Jesus Christ my Lord. The very first thing to be held by 
a true Christian, is that he has no inherent sufficiency foi 
any thing; and then, upon the top of that, he should place, 
as the universal antidote of discouragement, the great 
principle of accruing grace, sealed by the promise, — ]\ly 
grace is sufficient for thee. 

So, again, there are many who faint when they look on 
almost any duty or good work, because they are so con- 
sciously unequal to it. Why, if they were not unequal, 
or felt themselves to be equal, they had better, for that 
reason, decline it ; for there is nothing so utterly weak and 
impotent as this conceit of strength. Brethren, the day is 
wearing away, this is a desert place, there are hungry, per- 
ishing multitudes round us, and Christ is saying to us all, — ■ 
Give ye them to eat. Say not — we can not, we have nothing 
to give. Go to your duty, every man, and trust yourselves 
to him ; for he will give you all supply, just as fast as you 
need it. You will have just as much power as you believe 
you can have. Suppose, for example, you are called to be 
a Sabbath-school teacher, and you say within yourself, — I 
have no experience, no capacity, I must decline. That is 
the way to keep your incapacity forever. A truce to these 
cowardly suggestions. Be a Christian, throw yourself upon 
God's work, and get the ability you want, in it. So, if you 
are put in charge of any such effort or institution ; so, if 
you are called to any work or office in the church, cr to 
any exercise for the edification of others; say not that you 



BY OUR OWN ABILITY. 381 

are unable to edify ; undertake to edify others, and then 
you will edify yourself and become able. So' only is it 
possible for christian youth to ripen into a vigorous chris- 
tian manhood. All the pillars of the church are made out 
of what would only be weeds in it, if there were no duties 
assumed, above their ability in the green state of weeds. 
And it is net the weeds whom Christ will save, but the 
pillars. No Christian will ever be good for any thing 
without christian courage, or, what is the same, christian 
faith. Take upon you readily, have it as a law to be al- 
ways doing it, great works ; that is, works that are great 
to you; and this in the faith that God so clearly justifies, 
that your abilities will be as your works. Make largo 
adventures. Trust in God for great things. With }^our 
five loaves and two fishes he will show you a way to feed 
thousands. 

There is almost no limit to the power that may be ex- 
erted by a single church in this or any other community. 
Fill your places, meet your opportunities, and despair of 
nothing. Shine as lights, because you are luminous ; let 
the Spirit of Christ and of God be visible in you, because 
you are filled therewith ; and you will begin to see what 
power is possible to weakness ! Have faith, 0, ye of little 
faith. Hear the good word of the Lord, when he bays, — 
I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. Fear 
not, O, thou worm, Jacob. Behold I will make thee a 
new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth ; thou shalt 
thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shalt 
make the hills as chaff. Such arc God's promises. Let 
us believe them; which if we can heartily do, nothing is 
impossible. 



XX, 

HE THAT KNOWS GOD WILL CONFESS HIM. 

Psalm xl. 10 — u I have not hid thy righteousness within 
my heart ; 1 have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: 
I have not concealed thy loving -kindness and thy truth from 
the great congregation? 

What any true poet will say is commonly most natural 
to be said and deepest in the truth ; for his art is to be 
unrestrained by art, and to let the inspiration of his in- 
most, deepest life vent itself in song. And this exactly is 
the manner of our great Psalmist. We are not to under- 
stand that, in using the indicative form, he is merely re- 
citing a historic fact, and telling us that he has not hid 
God's righteousness in his heart. His meaning is deeper ; 
viz., to say that he could not do it, but mast needs 
testify of the goodness, and sing of the sweetness, and 
exult in the joy, he had found in the salvation of God and 
the secret witness of his Spirit. Nay, he must even send 
his song into the temple, and call on all the great congre- 
gation of Israel to sing it with him, and raise it as a chorus 
of praise to the great Jehovah. What I propose, accord- 
ingly, at the present time, is to speak of — 

The necessary openness of a holy experience ; or, in other 
words, of the impossibility that the inward revelation cf God 
in the soul should be shut up in it, and ? -emain hid, or unac- 
knowledged. 






HE THAT KX0W3 GOL> WILL CONFESS HI3I. 3S8 

I shall have in view especially two classes of hearera 
that are widely distinguished one from the other ; first, 
the class who hide the grace of God in their heart unde- 
signedly, or by reason of some undue modesty ; and sec- 
ondly, the class who, pretending to have it, or consciously 
having it not, take a pleasure in throwing discredit on all 
the appropriate expressions of it, such as are made by 
the open testimony and formal profession of Christ before 
men. 

The former class are certainly blamable in no such 
sense or degree as the others. They are naturally timor- 
ous and self-distrustful persons, it may be, and do nut see 
that they are distrusting God rather than themselves. 
They seem to themselves to have been truly renewed in 
the love of God, but they have some doubts, and they make 
it appear to be wiser that they should not, just now, testify 
their supposed new experience. It is better, they think, 
to wait till they have had a long, secret trial of themselves, 
and learned whether they can endure, — better, that is, to 
see whether they can keep alive the grace under suppres- 
sion; when it must be infallibly stifled and can not live, 
except in the open field of duty and love and holy fellow- 
ship. They are not simple ; they are unnatural ; what is 
in them, in their feeling, their secret hope, their joy begun, 
they regulate and suppress. If they were placed in heaveD 
itself, they would not sing the first month, pretending that 

y had not tried their voices, or perchance doubting t 
whether it is quite modest in them to thank God for his 
mercy, till they are more sure whether it is really to be 
sufficient in them. There is a great deal of unbelief in 
their backwardness ; a great deal of self-consciousness in 
their modesty; and sometimes a little will is cunningly 



384 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

mixed with both. Sometimes they wait to be exhorted 
and made much of by the sympathy of others. Some- 
times the very wicked thought is cunningly let in, behind 
their seeming delicacy, that God should do more for them, 
and give them an experience with greater circumstance. 

In opposition now to both these classes, and without 
assuming to measure and graduate the exact degree of 
their blame before God, I undertake to show that, where 
there is a true grace of experience in the heart, it ought 
to be, must, and will be manifest. And I bring to your 
notice — 

1. The evident fact that a true inward experience, or 
discovery of God in the heart, is itself an impulse also of 
self-manifestation, as all love and gratitude are — wants to 
speak and declare itself, and will as naturally do it, when 
it is born, as a child will utter its first cry. And exactly 
this, as I just now said, is what David means ; viz., that 
he had been obliged to speak, and was never able to shut 
up the fire burning in his spirit, from the first moment 
when it was kindled. He speaks as one who could not 
find how to suppress the joy that filled his heart, but must 
needs break loose in a testimony for God. And so it is 
in all cases the instinct of a new heart, in its experience 
of God, to acknowledge him. No one ever thinks it a 
matter of delicacy, or genuine modesty, to entirely sup- 
press any reasonable joy; least of all, any fit testimony 
of gratitude toward a deliverer and for a deliverance. In 
such a case no one ever asks, what is the use ? where ifl 
the propriety ? for it is the simple instinct of his nature 
to speak, and he speaks. 

Thus, if one of you had been rescued, in a shipwreck 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 385 

on a foreign shore, by some common sailor who had 
risked his life to save vou, and you should discover him 
across the street in some great city, you would, rush to his 
side, seize his hand, and begin at once, with a choking 
utterance, to testify your gratitude to him for so great a 
deliverance. Or, if you should pass restrainedly on, 
making no sign, pretending to yourself that you might be 
wanting in delicacy or modesty to publish your private 
feelings, bv anv such eager acknowledgment of your de- 
liverer, or that vou ought first to be more sure of the 
genuineness of your gratitude, what opinion must we 
have, in such a case, of your heartlessness and falseness 
to nature. In the same simple way, all ambition apart, 
all conceit of self forgot, all artificial and mock modesty 
excluded, it will be the instinct of every one that loves 
God to acknowledge him. He will say with our Psalmist, 
on another occasion, — Come and hear, all ye that fear 
God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. 
Verily God hath heard me, he hath attended to the voice 
of my prayer. 

2. The change implied in a true Christian experience, 
or the revelation of God in the heart, is in its very nature 
the soul and root of an outward change that is corres- 
pondent. The faith implanted is a faith that works in 
appropriate demonstrations, and must as certainly work, 
as a living heart must beat or pulsate. It is the right- 
eousness of God revealed within, to be henceforth the 
actuating spring and power of a righteous and devoted 
life. It will inform the whole man. It will glow in the 
countenance. It will irradiate the eye. It will speak 
from the tongue. It will modulate the very gait. It will 
enter into all the transactions of business, the domestic 

83 



388 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

tempers, the social manifestations and offices. It will 
make the man a benefactor, and call him into self-sacri- 
fice for God and the truth. It will send him forth to be 
God's advocate with men, and require him, in that man- 
ner, to make full testimony, either formally or by impli- 
cation, of what God has done for him. Of this, new, a 
true Christian experience is the root and beginning, else 
it is nothing. The inward change is no reality, but a 
pure fiction, if it does not issue in this. In this it will 
issue, when it is allowed to act unrestrainedly, even 
though it be, at first, the smallest seed of grace possible. 
And 0, what multitudes are there, in whom God is just 
beginning to be revealed, who by some false modesty, 
some morbid thought of prudence, refusing to be natural 
and simple, take the mode of silence, secresy, or suppres 
sion, and so, in a very few days or months, fatally stifle 
the grace of their salvation. The result is worse, only in 
the fact that the abuse is more wicked, when the subject 
dares, in the hour of his holy visitation, to deliberately 
make up his mind that he will have his new-born joy as a 
secret, and live in it for some years, at least, until he has 
absolutely proved the genuineness of his faith. It will 
not be long, in such a case, before he gets evidence enough 
against it ; for the only and the absolutely necessary proof 
of its genuineness is that it reveals itself ; comes out into 
action, becomes a life and a confession. The good tree 
will show the good fruit. It can not go on to bear the 
old, bad fruit out of modesty, or a pretended shrinking 
from ostentation ; it must reveal the righteousness of God 
"within, by the fruits of righteousness without, else it is 
only a mockery. 

3. If any one proposes beforehand, in Ills religious 






WILL CONFESS HIM. 387 

endeavors, or in seeking after God, to come into a secret 
experience and keep it a secret, his endeavor is plainly 
one that falsifies the very notion of christian piety, and if 
he succeeds or seems to succeed, he only practices a fraud 
in which he imposes on himself. He proposes to find 3 
grace, or obtain a grace from God, that he will hide and 
will not acknowledge, a grace, too, that will neither grow 
nor shine. Instead of taking up his cross to follow Christ, 
sacrificing openly wealth, reputation, friends, home, every 
thing dear for his Master's sake, he is going to find a 
grace that brings in fact no cross, requires no sacrifice. 
He is going to be saved in a more easy and more agreeable 
way than to come out and take his Master's part and bear 
the rough work of his Master's calling. To meet the 
scorn of the world, and endure the hardness that distin- 
guishes a soldier, is not in his thoughts. Perhaps he docs 
not expect to be so much of a Christian, so high in his 
attainments, and so eminently useful, but he hopes to be 
just enough Christian, in this more delicate and secret 
way, to save him ; beyond which he cares for nothing 
more. But you have only to look into his heart, in such 
a case, to see that his motive is bad, even beyond respect. 
He is only fawning about the cross, to get some private 
token of grace, when he does not mean to make any ex- 
pense, or suffer any loss or self-denial for it. To come 
out and be separate, to make the cause and truth of Jesus 
a care of his own, to live a life that witnesses for God, is 
not his plan. He means no such thing. He wants, in 
fact, to be saved by a fraud ; that is, by a secret experi- 
ence hid in the heart, which makes no open testimony, 
costs no sacrifice for God. To say that such a state of 
mind is untruth itself, and that any spiritual experience it 



888 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

may assme to have had is no better, -would be an insult 
even to your understanding. 

4. It is not less clear, as I have already said incidentally, 
and now say only more directly, that the grace of God iu 
the heart, unmanifested or kept secret, as many propose 
that it shall be, even for their whole life, wi]l be certainly 
stifled and extinguished. The thought itself is a mockery 
of the Holy Spirit. The heart might as well be required 
to live and not beat, as the new heart of love to hush 
itself and keep still in the bosom. Nothing can live that 
is not permitted to show the signs of life. Even a tree, a 
solid, massive oak, embracing the earth in roots equal to 
half its volume, and drawing out of the rich soil its needed 
nutriment, will be stifled and yield up its life, if it can not 
put on leaves at the extremities and grow. So let any, 
the best and ripest Christian, if such a one could be 
induced to do it, (as most assuredly he could not,) retire 
from all the acts and forbid himself all the duties, by 
which he would manifest his love to God, and declare 
God's love to men, and that love would very soon be so 
far smothered in his bosom, as to leave no evidence there 
of its existence. Accordingly you will find that all that 
class of persons, who take the turn described, give the 
most abundant proofs, ere long, that God is not with 
them. How can he be with them, when they propose 
even to be disciples in such a way that, if all others w r ere 
to follow and be like them, Christ would not have a 
church, or even one acknowledged friend or follower on 
earth ? Will he consent , by his Spirit, do you think,, to 
uphold a race of secret, unacknowledged followers, in this 
manner ; followers who turn their back to him, will not 
confess, will not even speak, or act the grace they receive? 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 389 

Be it rather a faithful, as it is a most evident saving, — For 
if we be dead with him ? we shall also live with him ; if 
we suffer, we shall also reign with him ; if we deny him, 
he also will deny us. 

5. This is the express teaching of the gospel, which 
every where and in every possible way calls out the souls 
renewed in Christ to live an open life of sacrifice and 
duty, and so to witness a good confession. — Come and 
follow me, is the word of Jesus. Deny thyself, take up 
thy cross, and follow me. If it is a lowly calling, if we 
can not descend to it, then he says, — Blessed is he who is 
not offended in me. If our pride, or the pride of our 
position, is too great, then he says, — "Whosoever shall be 
ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son 
of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his glory. To 
exclude any possible thought of a secret discipleship, he 
says, — I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye 
should bring forth fruit, — I have chosen you out of the 
world, therefore the world hateth vou, and will persecute 
you as it has persecuted me. In the same way his apos- 
tles call upon all that love him to come out and be sepa- 
rate, to put on the whole armor of God and stand, to fight 
openly the good fight, to endure hardness, to make a loss 
of all things for his sake, to be his witnesses before men; 
leading always the way by their own bold, faithful testi- 
mony. When you look, for example, on such a character 
as Paul, it is even difficult to conceive how there can ever 
be any real communion of spirit, in any future world, be- 
tween him and one so opposite as to think of living a 
secret, unavowed piety. Between that craven way of se- 
crecy and mere self-saving on one hand, and his .great heart 
of love and labor on the other, can any bond of sympa- 

33* 



390 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

thy ever exist? Scarcely does an open transgressor, acting 
out, with strong audacity, the unbelief and wickedness of 
which he dares to take the responsibility, appear to be as 
far removed, or as radically unlike. It never once occurs 
to Paul that he can keep the grace hid in his heart. He 
does not appear to come forth and speak because he has it 
as a point of obligation, as perhaps Daniel opened his win- 
dow to let his prayer be heard, but he has a testimony to 
give for Jesus that he must give, because of the fire it 
kindles in his heart. So before the Areopagus, and Felix, 
and Agrippa, and Csesar, and on every shore touched by 
his feet, he goes preaching the word and telling the story 
of his wonderful experience on the way to Damascus. 
Who that looks on this heroic figure, and sees how the 
heavenly ardor raised in this man's breast by the revelation 
of Jesus, impels him forth and sends him through the 
world, in a life-long testimony which no sacrifices or per- 
ils are able to arrest, can descend, for one moment, to so 
mean a thought, as the possibility of being saved by n 
secret piety. Again — 

6. It deserves to be made a distinct point that there is 
no shade of encouragement given to this notion of salva- 
tion by a secret piety, in any of the scripture examples or 
teachings. If there is to be a large body of the secret 
heirs of salvation, such as will greatly surprise the more 
open, more pretentious friends of God, when they see the 
number, there ought to be at least some examples in the 
scripture to encourage such an expectation. The nearest 
approach to such encouragement any where given, is that 
which is afforded by the case of the two senators, Joseph 
and Nicodemus. One of them we are told was a disciple 
secretly, for fear of the Jews. And the other came tc 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 391 

Jesus by night, to inquire of him, that he might not be 
counted a disciple. Both of them appear to have kept 
silence on his trial before the council, letting the decision 
go against him there, and taking no responsibility on his 
account. But after he was crucified, they came to ask the 
body and brought sjoices to embalm it. They were good 
as disciples to bury Jesus, but not to save his life, or serve 
him while living. Indeed if they had truly embalmed 
him in their hearts, so that we could hear of them after- 
ward, making common cause with the disciples, it would 
greatly comfort us concerning them. Shall we ever hear 
any thing more of them, in that world where God's true 
witnesses are gathered and crowned ? The truth is that 
there is a ver} r heavy shade over these two delicate and court- 
ly friends of Jesus. They were men of society, and there- 
fore saw the dignity of Jesus, but if you would like to be- 
reasonably confident of jomt salvation, it certainly becomes 
you to do something a great deal more positive than to 
Jet your Master die, making no stand for him even in the 
council where his death is voted, and then come in with 
spices to bury him. The most fragrant spices are those 
that honor one's life, and not the posthumous odors that 
embalm his body. How singular is it too that not even 
the Pentecost calls out these disciples of the tomb. It is 
as if the;y had been buried with their Master and had not 
risen. In that wondrous scene of fellowship where so 
, many, from all parts of the world, are surprised to find 
themselves confessing and embracing, in open brother- 
hood, strangers of all climes and orders, and selling even 
their goods to relieve the common wants, it docs not ap- 
pear that any spices of the heavenly charity are brought 
in by these two secret friends of Jesus. "When all beside 



392 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

are of one accord, rejoicing in acts of communion, such 
as tlie world has never seen, they have no part in it. 
Ananias and Sapphira had as much, or even more. 

Is it such examples that give encouragement to a secret 
piety ? These two had certainly some notion of such a dis- 
cipleship, but who will care to receive it from them ? No, 
the real disciple is different ; he is thought of as a man who 
stands for his Master, and is willing to die for his Master, 
Ye are the light of the world ; and the light of the world 
is lighted up, of course, to shine. Men do not light a 
candle, he says, and put it under a bushel. Let youi 
light so shine, that others, seeing your good works, may 
glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

Drawing our subject now to a conclusion, we notice, first 
of all, in a way of practical application, the very absurd 
pretense of those who congratulate themselves on having 
so much of secret merit, which they even count the more 
meritorious because they keep it secret. Some persons of 
a generally correct life are put on this course by the flat- 
teries of others, who love to let down the honors of relig- 
ion, and hold them up as a foil in doing it. Some do it 
willfully and scornfully, hinting that people who make 
so great a noise about religion would do well to be more 
modest, and that, if they were willing to proclaim their 
own merits, perhaps they might make as good a show 
themselves. And yet how many are there, if we may 
trust the world's report, of these secret saints! — not the 
least, but the greatest of all saints ! Tt is very much as if 
a nation, fighting for its liberties, had vast armies of secret 
patriots, who did not believe in making so great a noise in 
the dust and carnage of the field, but, since they are too 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 393 

modest to put their superior bravery forward, and rash to 
the onset shouting for their country, are to be counted, for 
their modesty's sake, the bravest and truest patriots of all. 
The real truth is, in respect to almost all these pretend- 
ers to a secret religion, that they are persons who know 
nothing of it. They are moralists, it may be, practicing at 
what they call a virtue by themselves, but they do noth- 
ing that brings them into any relationship with God. It 
is not the righteousness of God which they have hidden 
so carefully, but it is their own, — which, after all, is not 
hid. They never pray, they have no experience of God, 
they are as ignorant as the worst of men of any such thing 
as a divine joy in the heart. They do not break out and 
confess the Lord, simply because he is not in them. Noth- 
ing 1 is in them but themselves, and they do confess them- 
selves, they even boast themselves. Just as naturally 
would they boast and testify the love of God, if they felt 
its power. They really publish all the merit they have 
now, and, when religion dawns in their heart, they will as 
certainly declare the grace of God in that. 

And this again brings us to notice the significance of the 
profession of Christ, when, and why, and witli what views, 
it should be made. It should be made, because where 
there is any thing to be professed, it can not but be made. 
If a man loves God he will take his part with God, just as 
a citizen who loves his country will take the part of his 
country. He will draw himself to all God's friends and 
count them brothers, rejoicing with them in the fellowship 
of the common love. He will set himself, in every man- 
ner, to strengthen, comfort, edify, stimulate them in their 
fidelity and application to good works. All this he will 



394. HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

do by the simple instinct of his love to God. If there 
were no such thing enjoined upon the disciples of Christy 
as a formal profession, or church organization, there would 
yet be generated, within six months, exactly the same 
thing, The disciples would come out of the world in a 
body, testifying what God has done for them in the quick- 
ening grace of Christ shed abroad in their hearts, and 
claiming their fellowship with each other. As our 
fathers in the Mayflower bound themselves in a kind of 
civil covenant on their passage, they would band them- 
selves together in holy covenant before God, to co-operate 
in a form of spiritual order, — a church. They would 
have their officers and leaders. They would watch for 
each other. They would have terms adjusted by which 
to separate themselves from hypocrites and impostors, — all 
that we now have in our formal polities and church com- 
pacts. Co-operation is the strength of such as have a com- 
mon cause, and organization is the certain requisite of this. 
In this way the followers of Jesus must and will be set in 
solid phalanx, to co-operate in the maintenance of their 
common cause. 

This matter of professing Christ appears to be regarded 
by many as a kind of optional duty. Just as optional as 
it is for light to shine, or goodness to be good, or joy to 
sing, or gratitude to give thanks, or love to labor and 
sacrifice for its ends. No ! my friends, there is no option 
here, save as all duties are optional and eternity hangs on 
the option we make. Let no one of you receive or allow 
a different thought. Expect to be open, outstanding wit- 
nesses for God, and rejoice to be. In ready and glorious 
option, take your part with such, and stifle indignantly 
anv lurking thought of being a secret follower. 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 395 

Following in the same train, we notice, again, what value 
there may be in discoveries of christian experience, and 
the legitimate use they may have in christian society 
Some of the best and holiest impulses ever given to the 
cause of God in men's hearts are given by testimonies of 
christian experience, Like all other things, they are 
capable of abuse. They may run to a really pitiful con- 
ceit, being not only misconceived by the subjects them- 
selves, but even made a gospel of and thrust forward, on 
occasions where they are out of place and against all holy 
proprieties. Still there will be times, more or less private, 
when the humblest and weakest disciples can speak of 
what God has done for them, with the very best effect. 
Nor is there any thing so unpractical and destitute of 
christian respect as the shyness of some fastidious people 
in this matter. It never exists in a truly manly character, 
or in connection with a full-toned, living godliness. That 
will be no such dainty affair. It will speak out. It will 
declare what God has done, and show the method by which 
he works. The new joy felt will be a new song in the 
mouth, and every new deliverance will be fitly, gratefully 
confessed. There will be no shallow affectation of delicacy 
shutting the lips and sealing them in a forced dumbness, as 
if the righteousness of God had been taken by a deed of 
larceny. How often will two disciples help and strengthen 
each other by showing, each the other, in what way God 
has led him, what his struggles have been, and where his 
victories. And, if there should be three or four included, 
or possibly, and in fit cases, more, a whole church, what is 
there to blame? They spake often, one to another, says 
the prophet, and God hearkened and heard it. God list- 
ens for nothing so tenderly as when his children help each 



S96 HE THAT KNOWS GOD 

other by their testimonies to his goodness and the way hi 
which he has brought them deliverance. Besides there is 
a higher view of these personal testimonies and confessions. 
All these experiences, or life-histories of the faithful, will 
be among the grandest studies and most glorious re vela* 
lions of the future, — a spiritual epic of wars, and defeats, 
and falls, and victories, and wondrous turns of deliverance, 
and unseen ministries of God and angels, that, when they 
are opened to the saints, will furnish the sublimest of all 
their discoveries of Christ and of God. Exactly as an 
apostle intimates in those most hopeful, inspiring words of 
his, — When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and 
to be admired in all them that believe. May he not be 
glorified in them here, and, in some feebler measure, ad- 
mired for the testimonies yielded by their experience, as 
their warfare goes on. 

And now, last of all, let this one thing be impressed 5 
for every thing I have been saying leads to this, that the 
true wisdom, in all these matters of holy experience, is to 
act naturally. If you seem to yourself to have really 
passed from death unto life, and to have come into God's 
peace, interpose no affectations of modesty, no restric- 
tions of mock prudence, but in true natural modesty 
and a sound natural discretion, testify the grace you 
have received. Take upon you promptly every duty, 
enter the church, obey the command of Christ, in the con- 
fession of his name and the public remembrance of his 
lleath. 0, if we could get rid of so many affectations in 
religion, and so many unnatural, artificial wisdoms, how 
many more real Christians would there be, and these how 
much better and heartier. How many are there in our 



WILL CONFESS HIM. 397 

christian communities that are :iving afar off and appa- 
rently quite inaccessible, who, if, at a certain time in theii 
life, they had gone forward and taken the places to which 
they were called, would now be among the shining mem- 
bers of the great body of saints. And how many in the 
church cripple themselves and all but extinguish their life, 
by allowing nothing good or right in them to be naturally 
acted out. They stifle every beginning of grace by their 
over-persistent handling, scrutinizing, and testing of it. 
They read Edwards on the Affections, it may be, till their 
affections are all worn out and killed by so much jealousy 
of them, when, if only they could give them breath in the 
open life of duty and sacrifice, they would flame up in the 
soul as heavenly fires, indubitable and irrepressible. 

If any of you, either out of the church or in, have lost 
ground in these artificial and restrictive ways, come back 
at once to your losing point and consent to be natural, to 
act out whatever grace God will give you, and, when you 
are conscious of his love to you, or his new creating pre- 
sence and peace in your heart, be as ready to trust your con- 
sciousness as you are the consciousness that you think, or 
doubt, or do any thing else. In a word, do not hide the 
righteousness of God in your heart, lest you make a tomb 
of your heart and bury it there. Go forward and act out 
naturally, testify freely, live openly, the grace that is in 
you. 

Thus it was, I have already said, with the sturdy war- 
riors of the faith in the first ages of the church. They 
were men who took the grace in them as a call. The 
love that broke into their hearts burned up all their false 
modesty. Their humble position was exalted by the faith 

of Jegus, and they stood forth in all the singularity of the 

34 



398 HE THAT KNOWS GOB. 

cross, cowed by no superiors, daunted by no perils. God 
made them heroes by simply making them natural ; and 
the time of Christly heroism will never be restored, till 
men can take their lives in their hands and go forth, in 
downright good faith, to follow their Master, acting out 
the spirit he has kindled in them, and testifying to man- 
kind the riches of the grace they have found in his gospel 
What we want, above all things, in this age, is heartiness 
and holy simplicity ; men who justify the holy impulse 
of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artifi- 
cial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the sham pretenses 
of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they 
whom God will make his witnesses in all ages. They 
dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What 
God puts in them that they accept, and when he puts a 
song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and 
therefore stand for him outwardly. They endure hard- 
ness. They fight a fight. And these are the souls, my 
brethren, who shall stand before God accepted. And we 
shall be accepted as we stand with them, — otherwise never. 
It will be a gathering of the true soldiers, a gathering of 
them that have made sacrifices, conquered perils, and lived 
their open testimony for God and his Son. They will 
come in covered with their dust and scars, and Christ will 
crown them, as heroes that have stood and kept their 
armor. And then how deep and piercing are those words 
of his,— -will they slay us forever, or will they make us 
alive ? — Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before 
men, him will I also confess before my Father, which is in 
heaven. But, whosoever shall deny me before men, him 
will I also deny before my Father, which is in heaven. 



XXI. 

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PASSIVE VIKTUE9. 

.Revelations i. 9. — "The kingdom and patience of Jesus 
Christ'' 

Kingdom and patience ! a very singular conjunction of 
terms to say the least ; as if, in Jesus Christ were made 
compatible, authority and suffering, the impassive throne 
of a monarch and the meek subjection of a cross, the 
reigning power of a prince and the mild endurance of a 
lamb. What more striking paradox. And yet in this 
you have exactly that which is the prime distinction of 
Christianity. It is a kingdom erected by patience. It 
reigns in virtue of submission. Its victory and dominion 
are the fruits of a most peculiar and singular endurance. 
I say the fruits of endurance, and by this I mean, not the 
reward, but the proper results or effects of endurance. 
Christ reigns over human souls and in them, erecting there 
his spiritual kingdom, not by force of will exerted in any 
way, but through his most sublime passivity in yielding 
himself to the wrongs and the malice of his adversaries. 
And with him, in this most remarkable peculiarity, all 
disciples are called to be partakers ; even as the apostle in 
his exile at Patmos writes, — I Tohn, who also am your 
brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom 
and patience of Jesus. I offer it accordingly to your con- 
sideration, as a kind of first principle in a good life, which 
it will be the object of my discourse to illustrate-- 



400 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

That the passive elements, or graces of the Christian life, 
well maintained, are quite as efficient and fruitful as the active. 

It is not my design, of course, to discourage, or restrain 
wnat are called active works in religion. Christ himself 
was active beyond almost any human example. All great 
and true servants of God have been men of industry, and 
of earnest and strenuous application to works of duty. I 
only design to exhibit what many are so apt to overlook 
or forget, the sublime efficacy of those virtues which be- 
long to the receiving, suffering, patient side of character. 
They are such as meekness, gentleness, forbearance, for- 
giveness, the endurance of wrong without anger and re- 
sentment, contentment, quietness, peace, and unambitious 
love. These all belong to the more passive side of char- 
acter and are included, or may be, in the general and com- 
prehensive term patience. "What I design is to show that 
these are never barren virtues, as some are apt to imagine, 
but are often the most efficient and most operative powers 
that a true Christian wields ; inasmuch as they carry just 
that kind of influence, which other men are least apt and 
least able to resist. 

"We too commonly take up the impression that power is 
measured by exertion ; that we are effective because sim- 
ply of what we do, or the noise we make ; consequently 
that, when we are not in exertion of some kind, we are 
not accomplishing any thing; and that if we are too 
humble, or poor, or infirm, to be engaged in great works 
and projects, there is really nothing for us to do, and we 
are living to no purpose. This very gross and wholly 
mistaken impression I wish to remove, by showing that a 
right passivity is sometimes the greatest and most effective 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 401 

Christian power, and that if we are brothers and compan- 
ions in the kingdom and patience of Jesus, we are likely 
to fulfill the highest conception of the Christian life. Ob- 
serve then — 

First of all, that the passive and submissive virtues aie 
most of all remote from the exercise, or attainment of 
those who are out of the Christian spirit and the life of 
faith. All men are able to be active. Most men do exert 
themselves in works that are really useful. A vast multi- 
tude of the race have excelled in forms of active power 
that are commonly called virtuous, without any thought of 
religion. They have been great inventors, discoverers, 
teachers, law-givers, risked their life, or willingly yielded 
it up in the fields of war for the defense of their country, 
or the conquest of liberty, worn out every energy of mind 
and body, in the advancement of great human interests. 
Indeed it is commonly not difficult for men to be active or 
even bravely so ; but when you come to the passive or 
receiving side of life, here they fail. To bear evil and 
wrong, to forgive, to suffer no resentment under injury, to 
be gentle when nature burns with a fierce heat, and pride 
clamors for redress, to restrain envy, to bear defeat with a 
firm and peaceful mind, not to be vexed or fretted by cares, 
losses, or petty injuries, to abide in contentment and se- 
renity of spirit, when trouble and disappointment come — - 
these are conquests, alas how difficult to most of us ! Ac- 
cordingly it will be seen that a true Christian man is dis- 
tinguished from other men, not so much by his beneficent 
works, as by his patience. In this he most excels and 
rises highest above the mere natural virtues of the world. 
Just here it is that he is looked upon as a peculiar and 



402 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

partially divine character. The motives seem to be a 
mystery. What can set a man to the suffering: of evil 
and wrong with such a spirit? Thought lingers question- 
ing round him, asking for the secret of this mysterious 
passivity. Even if it be derided there is yet felt to be a 
something great in it; truly he is another kind of man 
and not of us, is the feeling of all who are not in Christ 
with him. By this he will be seen and felt to belong to a 
distinct order of being and character. He is set off by his 
patience, to be a brother and companion in the kingdom 
and patience of Jesus. 

Consider also more distinctly the immense power of 
principle that is necessary to establish the soul in these 
virtues of endurance and patience. Here is no place for 
ambition, no stimulus of passion, such as makes even 
cowards brave in the field. Here are no exploits to be 
carried, no applauses of the multitude to be won. The 
disciple knowing that God forgives and waits, wants to be 
like him ; knowing that he has nothing himself to boast 
of but the shame of a sinner, wants to be nothing, and 
prefers to suffer and crucify his resentments, and since 
God would not contend with him, will not contend with 
those who do him injury. He gets the power of his pa- 
tience wholly from above. It is not human, it is divine. 
Hence the impossibility of it even to great men. Napo- 
leon, for example, had the active powers in such vigor, 
that he made the whole civilized world shake with dread. 
But when he came to the place where true greatness con- 
sisted only in patience, that was too great for him. Just 
where any Christian woman would have shone forth in the 
true radiance and sublimity of an all- victorious patience. 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 403 

he, the conqueror of empires, broke down into a peevish., 
fretful, irritable temper, and losing thus, at once, all dig- 
nity and composure of soul, died before his time, because 
he had been resolved into a mere compost of faculty by 
the ferment of his ungoverned passions. On the other 
hand, we have in Socrates an illustrious example of the 
dignity and sacred grandeur of patience. The good spirit 
or genius he spoke of as being ever with him, was, in fact, 
the teacher of this noble and truly divine submission to 
wrong. It wears no merely human look, and the world 
of all subsequent ages have been made to feel that here is 
a certain sublimity of virtue, which sets the man apart from 
all the great men of profane history. No ancient charac- 
ter stands with him. He is felt to be a kind of sacred 
man who, by means of his wonderful passivity to wrong, 
and his gentleness toward his enemies, is set quite above 
his kind, revealing as it were, the gift of some higher na- 
ture. You perceive in his example that the passive virtues 
both involve and express a higher range of principles ; 
hence they are necessary to all highest character in the 
active. We can act out of the human, but to suifer well, 
requires a participation of what is divine. Hence the 
impression of greatness and sublimity which all men feel 
in the contemplation of that energy which is itself ener- 
gized by a self-sacrificing and suffering patience. And 
accordingly there is no power over the human soul and 
character so effective and so nearly irresistible as this. 

Notice again, yet more distinctly, what will add a yet 
more conclusive evidence, how it is chiefly by this endur- 
ance of evil, that Christ, as a Redeemer, prevails against 
the sin of the human heart and subdues its enmity. Just 



404 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

upon the eve of what we call his passion, he says, in vis- 
ible triumph, to his disciples, — "the prince of this w r orld 
is judged ; " as if the kingdom of evil were now to be 
crushed and his own new kingdom established, by some 
terrible bolt of judgment falling on his adversaries. It 
w r as even so ; and that bolt of judgment was the passion of 
the cross. We had never seen before the sublime passivi- 
ties of God's character, and his ability to endure the mad- 
ness of evil. We had seen him in the smoke and heard 
him in the thunders of Sinai. We had felt his judg- 
ments, we had trembled under his frown, we had seen the 
active management and sway of his Providence. But 
now in the cross, we see him bearing wrong, receiving 
the shafts of human enmity, submitting himself, in 
his sublime patience, to the fury of the disobedi- 
ent, and so, melting down by his gentleness what 
no terrors could intimidate, and no frowns of judgment 
could subdue. Thus our blessed Eedeemer made himself 
a king and set up a kingdom. It is the kingdom of his 
patience. When law was broken, and all the supports of 
authority set up by God's majesty were quite torn aw r ay, 
God brought forth a power, greater than law, greater than 
majesty, even the power of his patience and by this he 
broke forever the spirit of evil in the world. The sinner 
could laugh at God's thunders and stiffen himself against 
all the activities of his omnipotent rule, when exerted tc 
abase and humble him, but when he looks upon the cross 
of Jesus, and beholds the patience of God's love and 
mercy, then he relents and becomes a child. The new- 
creating grace of Christianity is scarcely more, in fact, 
than a divine application of the principle, that when noth- 
ing else can subdue an enemy, patience sometimes will. 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 405 

Again, it is important to notice that men, as being under 
sin, are set against all active efforts to turn them, or per- 
suade them, but never against that which implies no effort; 
viz., the gentle virtues of patience. We are naturally 
jealous of control by any method which involves a fixed 
design to exert control over us : therefore we are always 
on our guard in this direction. But we are none the less 
open, at all times, to the power of silent worth, and the 
unpretending goodness of those virtues that are included 
in patience. If a man is seen to live in content, and keep 
a mind unruffled by vexation, under great calamities and 
irritating wrongs, we have no guard set against that, we 
almost like to be swayed by such a kind of power. In- 
deed we should not have a good opinion of ourselves, if 
we did not admire such an example and praise it. And 
in just this way it happens, that many a proud and willful 
soul will resist the most eloquent sermon, and will then 
be completely subdued and melted by the heavenly seren- 
ity and patience of a sick woman. For a similar reason, 
all the submissive forms of excellence have an immense 
advantage. They provoke no opposition, because they are 
not put forth for us, but for their own sake. They fix our 
admiration therefore, win our homage, and melt into our 
feeling. They move us the more, because they do not 
attempt to move us. They are silent, empty of all power 
but that which lies in their goodness, and for just that rea- 
son they are among the greatest powers that Christianity 
wields. 

Once more it is important for every man, when he will 
cast the balance between the powers of action and of pas- 
sion or when he will discover the real effectiveness of pas- 



406 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

sive good, to refer to his own consciousness. See how 
little impression is often made upon yon, by the most 
strenuous efforts to exert influence over you, and then 
how often you are swayed by feelings of respect, rever- 
ence, admiration, tenderness, from the simple observation 
of one who suffers well ; receiving injury without resent- 
ment, gilding the lot of poverty and privation with a 
spirit of contentment and of filial trust in God ; forgiving, 
gentle, unresisting, peaceful, and strong under great storms 
of affliction. How gently clo these lovely powers of pa- 
tience insinuate themselves into your respect and love. 
When some palpable assault of active endeavor, such as 
argument, advice, or exhortation, besieges you, how in- 
stinctively do you harden yourself against it, and oflfei 
yourself to it as a wall to be battered down if it can be. 
But when you see a Christian suffer well, strong in adver- 
sity, calm and happy in days of trouble, smiling on through 
months of pain, in a spirit of unmurmuring patience, con- 
tented with a hard lot of poverty and outward discour- 
agement, how ready are you to feel the power of such 
examples, how welcome are they, as faces of blessing, to a 
place in your mind, and how often do they bend you, by 
their sacred power, to better purposes of life, that could 
not be extorted by any more obtrusive means. Let every 
Christian carefully observe his own consciousness here, 
and he will be in the least possible danger of dis-esteeming 
patience, as a barren or sterile virtue, or of looking upon 
effort and action as the only operative and fruitful Christian 
powers. 

Let us notice now in conclusion, some of the instructive 
and practical uses of the truth illustrated. And 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES 407 

1. It is here that Christianity makes issue with tho 
whole world on the question ox" human greatness. That 
is ever looked on by mankind and spoken of as greatness, 
which displays some form of active power. The soldier, 
the statesman, the inventor, the orator, the reformer, the 
poet — all great thinkers and doers, by whom, as mighty 
men and men of renown, great masses of people or even 
nations are swayed in their opinion?, or their history, or 
profoundly moved and prepared to their future — are 
taken as examples of the most real and highest form of 
greatness. It has never entered into human thought, un- 
sanctified by religion, that there is or can be any such 
thing as greatness in the mere passive virtues, or in sim- 
ply suffering well; least of all in suffering wrong and evil 
with a forgiving, unresentful spirit. Christianity is here 
alone, holding it forth as being, when required, the 
divinest, sublimest and most powerful of all virtues to 
suffer well. Even the summits of deific excellence and 
glory it reveals, by the endurance of enemies, and the bit- 
ter pangs of a cross accepted for their good. It works out 
the recovery of transgressors by the transforming power of 
sacrifice. And so it establishes a kingdom, which is itself 
the reign of the patience of Jesus. The w T hole plan cen- 
ters in this one principle, that the suffering side of char- 
acter has a power of its own, superior, in some respects, to 
the most active endeavors. And in this it proves its ori- 
ginality by standing quite alone. The Stoics appear to 
have had a dim apprehension that something of this kind 
might be true, but the patience they inculcated was that 
of the will and not the patience of love and trust. It was 
in fact, obstinacy, without any consent to suffering at all ; 
a will hardening itself into flint; a sensibility deadened 



408 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

by assumed apathy ; and all th.'.s in the proud determina- 
tion to be sufficient against all the evils of this life. It was 
not suffering well therefore, but refusing to suffer, and, in 
that view, was a most active and strenuous form of effort, 
And there was a certain greatness in this we can not deny, 
though it was only a mock-moral greatness and not that 
true heaven-descended greatness, which belongs to Chris- 
tian charity. To say — Let patience have her perfect work 
that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing ; to un- 
derstand that character is even consummated in these pas« 
sive virtues — this could only be taught by the gospel of 
the cross. And yet how manifestly true it is, when once 
it is seen in such an example as that of Jesus, that a suf- 
fering love is the highest conceivable form of greatness. 

2. The office of the Christian martyrs is here explained. 
We look back upon the long ages of woe, the martyr ages 
of the church, and we behold a vast array of active gen- 
ius and power, that could not be permitted to spend itself 
in works of benefaction to the race, but was consecrated 
of God to the more sacred and more fruitful grace of suf- 
fering. The design was, it would seem, to prepare a 
Christly past, to show whole ages of faith populated with 
men who were able, coming after their Master and bearing 
his cross, to suffer with him and add their human testi- 
mony to his. And they overcame by the blood of the 
Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved 
not their lives unto the death. And so it has been ordered 
that the church of God shall know itself to be the child 
of suffering patience. The scholars, the preachers, all the 
great and noted characters, who have served the church 
by their labors, pass into shade ; we think little of them , 
but the men of patience, the holy martyrs, these we feel 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 409 

as a sacred fatherhood, charging it, how seriously and 
filially upon our souls, to be followers of them, who through 
faith and patience inherit the promises. TTho that feels 
the power of these martyr ages descending on him, can 
ever think, even for a moment, that the passive virtues of 
the Christian life are sterile virtues, and that action is the 
only fruitful thing. 

3. We see in this subject, how it is that many persons 
are so abundantly active in religion, with so little effect ; 
while others who are not conspicuous in action accomplish 
so much. The reason is, that one class trust mainly to the 
virtues of action, while the others unite also the virtues 
of patience. One class is brother and companion in the 
kinofdom and works of Jesus, the other in the kingdom 
and patience of Jesus. Accordingly there is something 
of the same distinction between them, that there is between 
John the Baptist and the Saviour, as regards the extent 
and the subduing, permanent quality of their effects. 
Thus a man may be very active in warnings, exhortations, 
public prajers, plans of beneficence, contributions of time 
and money and it may seem, when you look upon him, 
that he is going to produce immense effects by his life. 
But suppose him to be very much of a stranger to the pa- 
tient virtues of Christ — railing at adversaries, blowing 
blasts of scorn upon those whom he wishes to reform in 
their practices, impetuous, willful, irritable, hot, — how 
much good is that man going to do by all his activity? 
What can he do but to irritate and vex and, as far as he 
is concerned, render the very name of religion or possibly 
of Christ himself, odious. Or suppose him to be a petu- 
lant neighbor, or a harsh and passionate man to persons in 
his employ, resentful and retaliatory against those who 

35 



410 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

cross him in his interests, fretful and storming always with 
impatience, when providences do not work rightly, or when 
other men do not exactly fulfill their duties, or engage- 
ments. How manifest is it that such a man will do little, 
or nothing, by his religious activity. The difference be- 
tween him and a right-minded, healthy Christian, is the 
same as between Jehu and Jesus. So the woman who is 
zealous in the street, busy ever in the works of active 
charity, but ill-natured and fretful in her house, impatient 
with her children, given to harsh words and bitter con- 
structions upon the character of others, implacable in her 
resentment of supposed injuries, jealous, envious — what 
can she accomplish by -any possible degree of activity? 
And how many are there in the churches who are really 
forward in all good works, but are continually thwarting 
all effect and reducing the value of their efforts as nearly 
to nothing as possible, by just such defects of passive 
goodness as some of these which I have named. 

On the other hand, have you never observed the im- 
mense power exerted by many Christian men and women, 
whose lives are passed, in comparative silence? You know 
not how it is, they seem to be really doing little, and yet 
they are felt by thousands. And the secret of this won* 
der is that they know how to suffer well — they are in the 
patience of Jesus. They will not resent evil, or think 
evil. They are not easily provoked. They are content 
with their lot, though it be a lot of poverty and affliction. 
They will not be envious of others. When they are 
wronged they remember Christ and forgive, when opposed 
and thwarted, they endure and wait. They live in an 
element of composure and sweetness, and can not be irri- 
tated and fretted by men, becau.se they are so much with 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 411 

God, and so ready to bear the cross of his Son, that hu- 
man wrongs and judgments Lave little power to unsettle 
or disturb them. Now before these a continual flood of 
influence will be continually rolling. Their gentleness is 
stronger than the onsets and assaults of other men. They 
are in the kingdom of Jesus reigning with him, becausp 
they are with him in his patience. 

4. The reason why we have so many crosses, trials, 
wrongs, and pains, is here made evident. AVe have not 
one too many for the successful culture of our faith. The 
great thing, and that which it is most of all difficult to pro- 
duce in us, is a participation of Christ's forgiving gentle- 
ness and patience. This, if we can learn it, is the most diffi- 
cult and the most distinctively christian of all attainments. 
Therefore we need a continual discholine of occasions; 
poverty, sickness, bereavements, losses, treacheries, mis- 
representations, oppressions, persecutions ; we can hardly 
have too many for our own good, if only we receive them 
as our Saviour did his cross. It is by just these refining 
fires of trial and suffering, that we are to be most advanced 
in that to which we aspire. The first thing that our Saviour 
set himself to, when he began his ministry, was the incul- 
cation of those traits that belong to the passive or patient 
side ; for these he well understood were most remote from 
us, highest above us, and most of all cross to the impatient 
stormy spirit of sin within us. He opened his mouth and 
taught them for his first lesson, — Blessed are the poor in 
spirit; Blessed are the meek; Blessed are the peace- 
makers ; Blessed are they that are persecuted for right- 
eousness sake ; and afterward, in the same discourse, — Re- 
sist not evil, whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, 
turn to him the other also — Love vour enemies, bless them 



412 THE EFFICIENCY OF 

that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray 
for ihem that despitefully use you and persecute you, that 
ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven* 
Ana then, going on to unfold this latter idea, showing how 
G3d reveals his impartial, unresentful patience, he cornea 
tc this, at last, as the summit of all — Be ye therefore per- 
fect even as your father in heaven is perfect — as if it were 
the crown of all perfection, whether in God or man, co 
endure evil well. Or, in other words, as if it were his 
opinion that all good character is consummated and 
crowned in the virtues included under patience. 

Therefore, I said we have not too many occasions given 
us for the exercise of patience ; which, is yet, more evi- 
dent, when we consider the Christian power of patience. 
How many are there who by reason of poverty, obscurity, 
infirmity of mind, or body, can never hope to do much 
by action, and who often sigh at the contemplation of their 
want of power to effect any thing. But it is given to them 
as to all, to suffer ; let them only suffer well and they will 
give a testimony for God, which all who know them will 
deeply feel and profoundly respect. It is not necessary 
for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sub- 
limest power is often simple patience ; and for just thai 
reason we need sometimes to see its greatness alone, that 
we may embrace the solitary, single idea of such great- 
ness, and bring it into our hearts unconfused with all other 
kinds of power. Whoever gives to the church of God 
such a contribution — the invalid, the cripple, the neglected 
and forlorn woman — every such person yields a testimony 
for the cross, that is second in value to no other. 

Let this be remembered and let it be your joy, in every 
trial and grief and pain and wrong you suffer, that to suf- 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 418 

fer well is to be a true advocate, and apostle, and pillal 
of the faith. 

" They also serve, who only stand and wait." 

And here let me add is pre-eminently the office and 
power of woman. Her power is to be the power most 
especially of gentleness and patient endurance. An office 
so divine, let her joyfully accept and faithfully bear --ad- 
ding sweetness to life in all its exasperating and bitter 
experiences, causing poverty to smile, cheering the hard 
lot of adversity, teaching pain the way of peace, abating 
hostilities and disarming injuries by the patience of her 
love. All the manifold conditions of human suffering and 
sorrow are so many occasions given to woman, to prove the 
sublimity of true submission, and reveal the celestial 
power of passive goodness. 

Finally, there is reason to suspect that men not religious, 
are commonly averted from the Christian life, more by 
their dislike of the submissive and gentle virtues, than by 
any distaste of sacrifice and active duty. They could 
enter as companions into his kingdom, if only the}' could 
be excused from the patience. Their life of sin is a life 
of will, or self-will ; therefore a life centered in themselves. 
They have undertaken to hew their own way ; therefore 
to thrust and push and fret themselves against obstruc- 
tions, and resent oppositions, to envy and hate, and revenge 
themselves on enemies, is the luxury, in great part, of their 
sin. They can admire and praise benevolence, truth, dis- 
interestedness of conduct, but to bear evil and love ene- 
mies and be patient — that is wholly distant from the tem- 
per they are in. They are not without admiration for these 
gentle kinds of excellence, when displayed by God him- 



414 THE EFFICIENCY OF, ETC. 

self; they will even be affected by what they perceive to 
be the sublimity of His greatness in them ; but they can 
not think of such in themselves without distaste or a feel- 
ing of dis-esteem. There is a want of spirit, something 
tame and weak in such ways, something too hard upon 
human pride to be endurable. 

And yet how plain it is, my friends, that for the want 
of just these passive virtues, your character is all disordeT 
and confusion. There can be nothing, as you have seen, 
of the highest, truest greatness in you, without the virtues 
of patience ; you are not called to descend to these, but, if 
possible to ascend. Christ commands you to take up his 
cross and follow him, not that he may humble you, or lay 
some penance upon you, but that you may surrender the 
low self-will and the feeble pride of your sin, and ascend 
into the sublime patience of heavenly charity. You be- 
gin to reign, the moment you begin to suffer well. You 
are only degraded when you suffer, and groan, writhing 
under pains God lays upon you, in the manner of a slave. 
Renounce what is real degradation, and the pride that now 
detains you will not be left. Choose what will most exalt 
you, and these gentle virtues of the cross will be accepted 
first. And then it will not be left us to exhort you ; foi 
you will even claim it as your joy, to be brother and com- 
panion in the kingdom and patience of Jesus. 



XXII. 

SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMEKTS. 

Jeremiah, xlviii.lL — "Modb hath been at ease from his 
youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emp- 
tied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity ; 
therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not 
changed" 

There is a reference here, it will be seen, to wine, or 
to the process by which it is prepared and finished. It is 
first expressed from the grape, when it is a thick, discol- 
ored fluid or juice. It is then fermented, passing through 
a process that separates the impurities, and settles them as 
lees at the bottom. Standing thus upon its lees or dregs 
m some large tun or vat, it is not further improved. A 
gross and coarse flavor remains, and the scent of the fecu- 
lent matter stays by and becomes fastened, as it were, in 
the body of the wine itself. To separate this, and so to 
soften or refine the quality, it is now decanted or drawn 
off into separate jars or skins. After a while it is done 
again, and then again ; and so, being emptied from vessel 
to vessel, the last remains of the lees or sediment are 
finally cleared, the crude flavors are reduced, the scent 
itself is refined by ventilation, and the perfect character 
is finished. 

So it has not been, the prophet says, with Moab. He 
hath been at ease from the first, shaken by no great over- 
turnings or defeats, humbled and broken by no captivi- 
ties, ventilated by no surprising changes or adversities. 



4:16 SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 

He lias lived on, from age to age, in comparative security ( 
settled on his lees ; and therefore he has made no improve* 
menfc. What he was, he still is ; his taste remains in him, 
and the scent of his old idolatries and barbarities of cus- 
tom is not changed. Accordingly the prophet goes on to 
declare, in the verses that follow, that God will now deal 
with him in a manner better adapted to his want ; that he 
will cause him to wander, empty his vessels, break his 
bottles, give him all the agitation he needs, and so will 
make him to be ashamed of the idolatries of Chemosh, even 
as Israel was made ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. 

There has all along been a kind of mental reference, it 
will be seen, in his language, to the singular contrast 
between Moab and Israel, which here in these last words 
comes out. Israel, the covenanted people, have had no 
such easy and quiet sort of history. They have been 
wanderers, in a sense, all the while ; shaken loose or un- 
settled every few years by some great change or adver- 
sity ; by a state of slavery in Egypt, by a fifty years' 
roving and fighting in the wilderness, by a time of dread- 
ful anarchy under the Judges, by overthrows and judg- 
ments under the Kings, by a revolt and separation of the 
kingdom, then by a captivity, then by another ; and so, 
while Moab, heaved and loosened by no such changes, 
has retained the scent of its old customs and abomina- 
tions, Israel has become quite another people. The calves 
of Bethel were long ago renounced ; the low superstitions, 
the coarse and sensual habit, all the idolatrous fashions 
and affinities which corrupted their religion, have been 
gradually fined away. 

Similar contrasts might be instanced among the states 
and nations of our own time ; in China, for example, and 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 417 

England: one standing motionless for long ages, and be- 
coming an eftcete civilization, absolutelv hopeless as re- 
gards the promise of a regenerated future; the other 
emptied from vessel to vessel, four times conquered, three 
times deluged with civil war. converted, reformed and re- 
reformed in religion, and finally emerging, after more 
than one change of dynasty, into a state of law, liberty, 
intelligence, and genuinely Christian manhood, to be one 
of the foremost and mightiest nations of the world. 



But my object is personal, not political or social, and 
the principle that underlies the text is one that may be 
universalized in its applications. It is this : 

77 require to be unsettled in life by many changes and 

.Iversity, in order to le most enectuaTly loos- 
from our own evils, and prepared to the will and work 
if Q 

We need, in other words, to be shaken out of our 
places and plans, agitated, emptied from vessel to vessel, 
else the flavors of our grossness and impurity remain. 
We can not be refined on our lees, or in any course of 
life that is uniformly prosperous and secure. My object 
will be to exhibit this truth and bring it into a just appli- 
cation to our own personal experience. Observe, then — 

1. How God manages, on a large scale, in the common 
matters of life, to keep us in a piocess of change and pre- 
vent our lapsing into a state of security such as we desire. 
Xo sooner do we begin to settle, as we fancy, and become 
fixed, than some new turn arrives by which we are shaken 
loose and sorely tossed. When the prophet declares that 
He will overturn, overturn, overturn, he gives in that sin- 
gle word a general account of God's polity in all human 



418 



SP1RITLAL DISLODGEMENTS 



affairs The world is scarcely turned on its axle more 
certainly than it is overturned by the revolutions of Prov- 
idence. It seems even to be a law, in every sort of busi- 
ness or trade, that nothing shall stand on its lees. Credit 
is a bubble bursting every hour at some gust of change.. 
What we call securities are as well called insecurities. 
Titles themselves give way, and even real estate becomes 
unreal under our feet. Nor is it only we ourselves that 
unsettle the security of things. Nature herself conspires 
to loosen all our calculations, meeting us with her frosts, 
her blastings, her droughts, her storms, her fevers, and 
forbidding us ever to be sure of that for which we labor. 
Markets and market prices faithfully represent the un- 
steadiness of our objects. We look upon them as v/e 
might upon the sea, and it even makes one's head swim, 
only to note the fluctuations of all human goods and 
values represented there. Nothing in the world of business 
is allowed to have a base of calculable certainty. Unfore- 
seen disasters wait on our plans, in so many forms and com- 
binations, that we are sure of nothing, and commonly bring 
out nothing exactly as we expected to do. 

The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand 
decanting process, where change follows change, and all 
are emptied from vessel to vessel. Here and there a man, 
like Moab, stands upon his lees, and commonly with the 
same effect. Fire, flood, famine, sickness in all forms and 
guises, wait upon us, seen or unseen, and we run the 
gauntlet through them, calling it life. And the design 
appears to be to turn us hither and thither, allowing us 
no chance to stagnate in any sort of benefit or security, 
Even the most successful, who seem, in one view, to go 
straight on to their mark, get on after all, rather by a 



SPIRITUAL DISLOBGEMENTS. 41S 

dexterous and continual shifting, so as to keep their bal 
ance and exactly meet the changing conditions that befal] 
them. ISTor is there any thing to sentimentalize over in 
this ever shifting, overturning process, which must be 
encountered in all the works of lite ; no place for sighing— 
vanity of vanities. There is no vanity in it, more tfcuui 
in the mill that winnows and separates the grain. 

But we must hasten to points more immediately relig- 
ious, carrying with us, as we may, a lesson derived from 
these analogies. Observe, then — 

2. That the radical evil of human character, as being 
under sin, consists in a determination to have our own 
way, which determination must be somehow reduced and 
extirpated. Hence the necessity that our experience be 
so appointed as to shake us loose continually from our 
purpose, or from all security and rest in it. Sin is but 
another name for self-direction. We cast off the will of 
God in it, and set up for a way and for objects of our own. 
We lay off plans to serve ourselves, and we mean to carry 
them straight through to their result. Whatever crosses 
us, or turns us aside, or in any w r ay forbids us to do or 
succeed just as we like, becomes our annoyance. And 
these kinds of annoyance arc so many and subtle and va- 
rious, that the very world seems to be contrived to baffle 
us. In one view it is. It would not do for us, having 
cast off the will of God, and set up our own will, to let 
us get on smoothly and never feel any friction or collision 
with the will cast off*. Therefore God manages to turn us 
about, beat us back, empty us from vessel to vessel, and 
make us feel that our bad will is hedged about, after all, 
by his Almighty purposes. Sometimes we seem to bend, 
sometimes to break. Be it one or the other, we lose a 



420 SPIRITUAL DISLODGEME.NTS. 

part of our stiffness. By and by, to avoid bre^kingj we 
consent to bend, and so at last become more flexible to 
God, falling into a mood of letting go, then of consent, 
then of contrition. The coarse and bitter flavor of oui 
self-will is reduced in this manner, and gradually fined 
away. If we could stand on our lees, in continual peace 
and serenity, if success were made secure, subject to no 
change or surprise, what, on the other hand, should we do 
more certainly than stay by our evil mind and take it as 
a matter of course that our will is to be done ; the very 
thing above all others of which we most need to be cured. 
It would not answer even for the Christian, who has 
meant to surrender his will, and really wants to be per- 
fected in the will of God, to be made safe in his plans 
and kept in a continual train of successes. He wants a 
reminder every hour; some defeat, surprise, adversity, 
peril ; to be agitated, mortified, beaten out of his courses, 
so that all remains of self-will in him may be sifted out 
of him, and the very scent of his old perversity cleared. 
0, if we could be excused from all these changes and 
somersets, and go on securely in our projects, it would 
ruin the best of us. Life needs to be an element of danger 
and agitation,' — perilous, changeful, eventful ; we need to 
have our evil will met by the stronger will of God, in 
order to be kept advised, by our experience, of the impos- 
sibility of that which our sin has undertaken. It would 
not even do for us to be uniformly successful in our best 
meant and holiest works, our prayers, our acts of sacrifice, 
our sacred enjoyments ; for we should very soon fall back 
into the subtle power of our self-will, and begin to imag- 
ine, in our vanity, that we are doing something ourselves. 
Even here we need to be defeated and baffled, now and 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 421 

then, that we may be shaken out of our self-reliance and 
sufficiency, else the taste of our evil habit remains in us 
and our scent is not changed. 

3. Consider the fact that our evils are generally hidden 
from us till they are discovered to us by some kind of 
trial or adversity. This is less true of vicious and really 
iniquitous men ; they see every hour with their eyes what 
is in them, or at least they may, by the acts they dc. 
Their profanities, frauds, and lies, their deeds of impurity 
and violence, all that comes out of them shows them to be 
defiled. Not so with a generally correct man, still less 
so with a genuine, faithful Christian, endeavoring after 
greater sanctification and a closer conformity to the will 
of God. Every such man, living a life outwardly blame- 
less, and desiring earnestly to grow in all true holiness, is, 
by the supposition, correct outwardly, and therefore the 
evils that remain in his spirit are to a great extent latent 
from himself. Sometimes, in a frame of high communion 
with God, he imagines that he is much more nearly puri- 
fied than he is. And when he knows, from his poverty 
and spiritual dullness, that something is certainly wrong 
in him, he will have great difficulty in detecting the pre- 
cise point of his infirmity. It is in him like some scent 
in the air, the source of which is hidden and can not be 
traced. Perhaps he will never definitely trace it so as to 
have it as a discovery, and yet God will manage, by the 
gusts of adversity and change, to winnow it away, even 
though it be undiscovered. More commonly, however, 
every such turn of adversity will bring out some particu- 
lar fault in him, which before was hid, and which lie 
greatly needed to have discovered, and he will be able to 

set himself to the very work of purification by a direct 

36 



422 SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 

endeavor. What good man ever fell into a time of deep 
chastening, who did not find some canning infatuation, 
by which he was kolden, broken up, and some new dis- 
covery made of himself. The veils of pride are rent, the 
rock of self-opinion is shattered, and he is reduced to a 
point of gentleness and tenderness that allows him to 
suffer a true conviction concerning what was hidden from 
his sight. Nor is any thing so effectual in this way as to 
meet some great overthrow that interrupts the whole 
course of life; all the better if it dislodges him even in 
his Christian works and appointments. What was I 
doing, he now asks, that I must needs be thrown out of 
my holiest engagements; for what fault was I brought 
under this discipline? He has every motive now to be 
ingenuous, for the hand of Grod is upon him, and what 
Grod declares to him he is ready to hear. And ah ! how 
many things that weie hidden from him start up now into 
view ! How could he be allowed to go on prosperously, 
when there was so much in him and his engagements that 
required rectification, and ought, if it be not removed, to 
forever exclude him from these engagements. Perhaps 
he will be thrown out of them entirely, and turned to 
something else, that he may there discover, in a second 
overthrow, other evils that are still hidden from his 
knowledge. 0, it is a great thing with us that our God 
Ls faithful and will not spare to set us in order before our 
own eyes. If he should let us be as Moab from our youth, 
then should we be as Moab in the loss of all valuable im- 
provement Better is it, far better that he empties uu 
about on this side and on that, and passes us through all 
sorts of captivities ; for then we are, at least, learning 
something which is valuable to be known. 



SPIRITUAL D1SL0DG-EMENTS. 423 

4. It is another point of advantage in the changes and 
surprises through which we are continually passing, that 
we are prepared, in this manner, to the gracious and refin- 
ing work of the spirit in us. When we are allowed to stand 
still and are agitated by no changes, we become incrusted, 
as it were, under our remaining faults or evils and shut up 
in them, as wine in the vat where it is kept. And the 
Spirit of God is shut away, in this manner, by the imper- 
viousness of our settled habit. But when great changes 
or calamities come, our crust is broken up, and the fresh- 
ening breath of the Spirit fans the open chamber of the 
soul, to purify it. Now the prayer, cleanse thou me from 
secret faults, finds an answer which before was impossible. 
Providence, in this view, is 'an agitating power to break 
the incrustations of evil and let the gales of the Spirit 
blow where they list in us. Under some great calamity or 
sorrow, the loss of a child, the visitations of bodily pain, 
a failure in business, the slanders of an enemy, a persecu- 
tion for the truth or for righteousness' sake, how tender 
and open to God does the soul become ! Search me, 
God, and try me, and see if there be any evil way in me, 
is now the ingenuous prayer, and the Spirit of God comes 
in to work the answer, finding every thing ready for an 
effectual and thorough purgation. And so, by a double 
process, Providence and the Spirit, both in unity, (for God 
is always one with himself,) we are perfected in holiness 
and finished in the complete beauty of Christ, We could 
never hope to have our secret evils cleared by any process 
of particular discovery and sanctification, but God's own 
Spirit can reach every most hidden fault, and all the in* 
numerable, undiscoverable vestiges of our depravity, do- 
ing all things for us. And so, at last, even the scent of 



424 SPIKITUAL DISLUDGEMENTS. 

it tv ill be finally changed. These holy ventilations of 
grace, it is our comfort to know that nothing can finally 
escape. A gain — 

5. Too great quiet and security, long continued, aro 
likely to allow the reaction or the recovered power of our 
old sins and must not therefore be suffered. As the wine 
standing on its dregs or lees contracts a taste from the lees, 
and must therefore be decanted or drawn off, so as to have 
no contact longer with their vile sedimentary matter, so 
we, in like manner, need to be separated from every thing 
pertaining to the former life, to be broken up in our ex- 
pectations and loosened from the affinities of our former 
habit. In our conversion to God we pass a crisis that, 
like fermentation, clears our transparency and makes us 
apparently new ; we are called new men in Christ Jesus ; 
still the old man is not wholly removed. It settles like 
dregs at the bottom, so to speak, of our character, where 
it is, for the present, unseen. One might imagine, for the 
time, that it is wholly taken away, and yet it is there, and 
is only the more likely to infect us that it is not sufficiently 
mixed with our life to cloud our present transparency. 
Our sanctification is not to be completed save by separa* 
tion from it. And therefore God, who is faithful to us, 
continues to sever us, as completely as possible, from all 
association with the old life and condition ; breaks up our 
plans, compels a readjustment of our objects, empties us 
about from vessel to vessel, that our taste may not remain. 
Otherwise the hidden sediment of the old man will some- 
time flavor and corrupt the new even more than at first. 
Suppose a man is converted as a politician — there is noth« 
ing wrong certainly in being a politician — but how subtle 
is the power of those old habits and affinities in which he 



SPIRITUAL DISL0DGEME3J"TS. 425 

lived, and how likely are they, if he goes straight on by a 
course of prosperous ambition, to be finally corrupted by 
their subtle reaction. When he is defeated, therefore, a 
little further on, by untoward combinations, and thrown 
out of all hope in this direction, let him not think it hard 
that he is less successful now in the way of Christ, than 
he was before in the way of his natural ambition. God 
understands him and is leading him off not unlikely to 
some other engagement, that he may get him clear of the 
sediment on which he stands. In the same way doubtless 
it is that another is driven out of his business by a failure, 
another out of his family expectations by death and be- 
reavement, another out of his very industry and his living 
by a loss of health, another out of prayers and expecta- 
tions that were rooted in presumption, another out of 
works of beneficence that associated pride and vanity, 
another out of the ministry of Christ where by self-indul- 
gence, or in some other way, his natural infirmities were 
rather increased than corrected. There is no engagement 
however sacred from which God will not sometimes sepa- 
rate us, that he may clear us of our sediment and the re- 
actions of our hidden evils. Were it not for this, were 
every thing in our trade or engagement to go on perfectly 
secure and prosperous, how certainly would the old man 
steal up i7i it from the bottom where it lies, to corrupt and 
foul and fatally vitiate the new. This, our God will not 
suffer, and therefore he continues to unsettle us, tear us 
away from our works, our gains, our plans, our pleasures, 
our associations, and not seldom even from our recollec- 
tions, that our change may go on to completion. 

Once more, we are most certainly finished, when we are 
brought closest to God, and we are never brought so near 

36* 



426 SPIRITUAL DISL0DGE1TENTS. 

to God as when we are most completely separated from o\ir 
personal schemes and objects, and from all the works of 
the flesh. How tender do we become, when we are loos- 
ened by some great and sore disappointment; even a? 
Israel was finally cured of its last vestiges of idolatry by 
itb bitter captivities. Having nothing left of all our ex- 
pectations, driven out of our places and plans and works, 
and all that our pride cherished, possibly out of our pray- 
ers themselves, because of the pride so cunningly veiled 
in their guises of sanctity, what can we do but confess 
that God himself is our all, and take Him as the total 
blessing of our life. How closely now are we drawn to 
Him, receiving, as it were, a divine flavor from his purity. 
And when he is thus brought nigh, how rapidly are 
we changed in all the secret scents and flavors of oui 
defilement. 

And now let me suggest as in reference to all these 
illustrations, how much more they would signify if it were 
a day with us of great public calamity, a day, for example, 
of religious persecution, a day when fathers or sons are 
hunted or dragged to prison, or when possibly we our- 
selves are expecting every hour to be seized and arraigned 
for the faith of the gospel — and so to be witnesses for it 
even by the sacrifice on our lives. these times of perse- 
cution, what Christians do they make ! How little hold 
has this world, or its sins, of men who have laid even their 
lives upon the altar ! We complain how often, that in 
these days of security and liberty, Christian piety grows 
thin and feeble, that it loses tone, and appears even to 
want a character of reality. The difficulty is that our 
opinions, our faith, our Christian life, cost us nothing, and 
the church slides into the world because there is no broad 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMEXTS. 427 

palpable line of suffering and sacrifice to separate the two 
And for just this reason, how many in our time that have 
practically lost the distinction, are beginning to be chiefly 
occupied with Christianity, as a gift to this world ; admir- 
ing it as a civilizer of society and a promoter of what is 
called human progress. How many even seem to expect 
that the modern conditions of political liberty and secu- 
rit y, coalescing with and patronizing the gospel, are going 
to set it onward, and that henceforth the world must be 
growing into a kind of perfect state, by its own vital 
forces. Alas, I mistrust this millenium of Moab ! it will 
never be seen. It is not in man, or human society, to be 
purified, exalted, and finally consummated by any such 
comfortable and even process. And there is nothing in 
our present indications to favor such a hope. These times 
of security and ease, when rightly viewed, are but the lull 
of the ocean between storms. It were hard to say that 
times of public fear and persecution are better. God 
knows what is better and will temper the ages himself. 
But alas for poor human nature, what does it show more 
evidently even now, in this short holiday of peace, than 
the inevitable tameness and feebleness of devotion when 
the fires of great public adversity are smothered. Or if 
we seek to dress up still our giants and heroes in the faith, 
bow shadowy and meagre do they look. And what can 
we rationally promise, but that our condition of ease and 
humanitarianism must finally run itself into the ground, 
preparing some terrible reaction, some war of Gog and 
Magog that shall empty the church from vessel to vessel, 
leaving her again, as of old, nothing to hope for and look 
after on earth, but that she may win a better world in the 
sacrifice and loss of this. 



428 SPIKITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 

The applications of this subject are many and various. 

First of all, it brings a lesson of admonition to the class 
of worldly men who are continually prospered in the 
things of this life. One may be continually prospered in 
some things when he is not in all. He may be uniformly 
successful in his business engagements and enterprises, foi 
example, when, in fact, he is tossed by many and sore dis- 
appointments, and shaken by intense agonies of heart. 
And, by these, he may be kept in that airing of right con- 
viction, which is needed to winnow his bad tempers, and 
sober his confidence. Far otherwise will it be with you, 
if you prosper in every thing and are agitated by no kind 
of adversity. This is the blessing of Moab, and the dan- 
ger is that, standing thus upon the lees from your youth, 
disturbed by no crosses, unsettled by no changes, you will 
finally become so fast-rooted in pride and forgetfulness of 
God as to miss every thing most dear in existence. Noth- 
ing could be more perilous for you than just that which 
you deem your happiness. Nor is any word of God more 
pointedly serious than this — Because they have no changes, 
therefore they fear not God. I commend it to your deep- 
est and most thoughtful attention. 

Others, again, have been visited by many and great ad- 
versities, emptied about from vessel to vessel all their lives 
long, still wondering what it means, while still they adhere 
to their sins. There is, alas ! no harder kind of life than 
this, a life of continual discipline that really teaches noth- 
ing. Is it so with you, or is it not ? Scorched by all man- 
ner of adversities, are you still unpurifiecl by the fires you 
have passed through? Defeated, crossed, crushed, beateii 
out of every plan, baffled in every project, shut away from 
every aspiration, blasted in every object your soul has em- 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMEKTS, 429 

braced, are you still unprofited? I have known such ex- 
amples, — fig trees that God lias dug about every year, and 
that still remain as barren as if no hand of care had 
touched them Is there any thing more strange, in all 
the subjects of knowledge, than that a man, an intelligent 
being, should be nowise instructed by the sufferings of a 
life? — separated in no degree from the world and self and 
fehe scent of his manifold evils, by that which God has sent 
upon him to correct his understanding, and purify his love, 
and fashion him even for the angelic glory? So he plods 
on still, contriving, and failing, and groping with his face 
downward, and hoping against hope, and wondering that 
the earth will not consent to bless him. 0, poor, weather- 
worn, defeated, yet unprofited man, — he can not see when 
good cometh ! There is no class of beings more to be 
pitied than defeated men who have gotten nothing out of 
their defeat but that dry sorrow of the world which makes 
it only more barren, and therefore more insupportable. 

Is it necessary, in the review of this subject, to remind 
any genuine Christian what benefits he ought to receive in 
the trials and changes through which he is called to pass? 
How "many are there who are finally driven out of every 
plan they have laid for their course of life. Their fami- 
lies are dissolved and reconstructed. Their location is dis- 
lodged. Their business ends in defeat. Xo kind of settle- 
ment is attempted which is not broken up by some kind of 
change or adversity. And even where there is a measure 
of prosperity, how many are the changes, losses, trials, sur- 
prises, and pains. Do you find, my brother, that, when 
you are thus emptied about, dislodged, agitated, loosen ec^ 
you are purified ? Or, does the bad flavor of your worldly 
habits, the scent of your old ambition, or your earthly 



4:30 SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 

pride, remain. There could not be a worse sign for you 
as regards the reality of your christian confidence. And 
it will be a worse sign still, if you are habitually irritated 
by your defeats, and even dare to murmur impatiently 
against the strange severity of God, — as if it were a strange 
thing for you that your faithful God will try to bring you 
off the lees on which you stand! A far more strange 
thing is it that, having no great persecutions to suffer for 
Christ, you can not find how, as a follower, to endure these 
common trials, God forbid that you so little understand 
your privilege in them. Eeceive them meekly rather, and 
bow down to them gladly. Bid them welcome when they 
come, and, if they come not, ask for them ; lift up youi 
cry unto God, and beseech him that by any means he will 
correct you, and purify you, and separate you to himself. 

But there is a use of this subject that has many times 
occurred to you already, and to this, in conclusion, let us 
now come* By the visitation of God upon us, — upon you, 
that is, and upon me, — the tenure and security of oui rela- 
tion as pastor and people has been interrupted now for two 
whole years. Whether it was God's design, by this inter- 
ruption, to refine us and purify us to a better use of this 
relation, or to bring it to a full end, remains now to be seen. 
The former is my earnest hope and my constant prayer- 
Was there nothing in us, on one side or on both, that re- 
quired this discipline and made it even necessary for us ? 
Is there no reason to suspect that, in our state of confi- 
dence and security, we were beginning to look for tho 
blessing of Moab and not for the blessing of Israel? For 






♦This discourse was so far colored, as a whole, by the peculiar interest 
of the occasion referred to here in the close, that retaining the occasional 
matter appears to be required. 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS 431 

myself, I feel constrained to admit that I had come to re- 
gard my continuance here too much as a matter of course^ 
an appointment subject to no repeal or change. I had 
learned to trust you implicitly as my friends, and knew 
that you could never be less. I had let my roots run out 
and downward among you, in a growth of nearly a quarter 
of a century. There was stealing on me thus, as I now 
discover, a feeling of security and establishment, which is 
not good for any sinful man, and will not let him be the 
pilgrim on earth that he ought. Under the semblance of 
duty and constancy, I had undertaken to die here and no- 
where else, knowing no other people, place, or work. And 
under this fair cover crept a little foolish pride, it may be. 
that really needed chastisement. As if it were for me to 
say where I would stay or die ! Just here, unwittingly, 
my imagined constancy became presumption. Further- 
more, I had always been too much like Moab, as I now 
see, and bitterly needed some kind of captivity more real, 
some change more crippling, than the trivial adversities I 
had heretofore tossed aside so lightly. 

Meantime, was there nothing on your part, or in you 
that required a similar discipline? Having seen your 
church almost uniformly prosperous for a long course of 
years, and growing steadily up from a feeble and small one, 
to a condition of strength, were there not many of you that 
were losing a righteous concern for it, and beginning to 
leave it practically to me, as if I could take care of it? 
ceasing in that manner from their trust in God, by which 
they had before upheld me, and from those personal re- 
sponsibilities for it, which are the necessary condition of 
all earnestness in the christian life ? I should do wrong 
not to say that I have, many times, been so far oppressed 



1-32 SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. 

by this conviction, as to doubt whether it might not even 
be better for you, if I were entirely taken out of the way. 
You have been subjected to some uncommon trials on my 
account. Have you never slid from the christian constancy 
and patience in which you stood, into a temper of mere self- 
reliance, as if by some human sufficiency you had been able 
to stand unbroken ? Were you touched by no subtle pride, 
were you betrayed into no undue self-confidence, were you 
slid unwittingly into no trust in a worm thai you mis- 
took for trust in God? Ah, if you had been cut down as a 
church by adversity, crippled, weakened, emptied from 
vessel to vessel, brought into captivity as regards all hope 
from man, how much might it have done for you. It is 
the blessing of Moab, as I greatly fear, that has injured 
you, and, as God is faithful, he would not let you suffer 
in this manner longer. And so, both for my sake and for 
yours, he has brought this heavy trial or adversity upon 
us. By this he takes us off our lees, and his design has 
been to ventilate us by the separation we have suffered. 
He means to purify us, to take away all our self-confidence, 
and our trust in each other, and bring us into implicit, 
humble trust in himself. 

And the work he has begun, I firmly believe that he 
will prosecute till his object is gained. If two years of 
Reparation will not bring us to our places and correct our 
cin, he will go further. He will finally command us apart 
and tear us loose from all our common ties and expecta- 
tions. For myself, I am anxious to learn the lesson he is 
teaching, and I pray God that a similar purpose may enter 
into you. Let not this happy return, which God has vouch- 
safed me, and the congratulations of the occasion, drive 
away all the sober and searching truths God was trying to 



SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMEXTS. 433 

enter into our hearts. Be jealous of any such lightness. 
As you rejoice with me and give thanks unto God for his 
undeserved goodness, consent with me to God's corrections 
also, and join me in the prayer that other and heavier cor- 
rections may not be made necessary, by the want of all 
fruit in these. For be assured that, as you are Israel and 
not Moab, God will deal with you as he deals with Israel, 
and will not spare till your purification is accomplished. 
Let us go to him as penitents, in our common sorrow, and 
make our common confession before him, determined, ever 7 
one, that he will turn himself to God's correcting hand, 
and follow it. And as thou hast smitten us, 0, Lord, do 
thou heal us; as thou hast broken, do thou bind us up; % 
that we may be established in holiness before thee, and 
walk humbly and carefully in thy sight, as they whom the 
Lord hath chastened 

37 



XXIII 

CHRIST AS SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD. 

Hebrews vii. 26. — " Separate from sinners, and made 
higher than the heavens" 

With us of to-day, it is the commendation of Jesus 
that lie is so profoundly humbled, identified so affectingly 
with our human state. But the power he had with the 
men of his time moved in exactly the opposite direction, 
being the impression he made of his remoteness and sepa- 
rateness from men, when he was, in fact, only a man, as 
they supposed, under all human conditions. "With us, it 
is the wonder that he is brought so low. With them, that 
he could seem to rise so high ; for they knew nothing, as 
yet, of his person considered as the incarnate Word of the 
Father. This contrast, however, between their position 
and ours is not as complete as may, at first, seem to us ; 
for that which makes their impression, makes, after all, a 
good part of ours. For when we appeal thus to his hu- 
miliations under the flesh, and as a man of sorrows, we 
really do not count on the flesh and the sorrows, as being 
the Christly power, but only on what he brought into 
the world from above the world, by the flesh and the sor- 
rows, — the holiness, the deific love, the self-sacrificing 
greatness, the everlasting beauty ; in a word, all that most 
distinguishes him above mankind and shows him most 
transcendently separate from sinners. Here is the great 
power of Christianity — the immense importation it makes 



CHRIST AS SEPARATE, ETC. 435 

from worlds of glory outside. Hence the intimation of 
the text, that it became our Lord, as the priest of our sal- 
vation, to be not only holy, harmless, and undefiled, but 
separate also from sinners, and made higher than the 
heavens ; that so he may be duly qualified for his trans- 
cendent work and office. 

What I propose, then, for my present subject, is, — The 
separateness of Jesus from men; the immense power it had 
and mast ever have on their feeling and character. 

I do not mean by this that Christ was separated as 
being at all withdrawn, but only that in drawing himself 
most closely to them, he was felt by them never as being 
on their level of life and character, but as being parted 
from them by an immense chasm of distance. He was 
born of a woman, grew up in the trade of a mechanic, 
was known as a Xazarene, stood a man before the eye, 
and yet he early began to raise impressions that separated 
him, and set him asunder inexplicably from the world he 
w r as in. 

These impressions were not due, as I have said, to any 
distinct conceptions they had of him as being a higher 
nature incarnate ; for not even his disciples took up any 
such definite conceptions of his nature, till after his death 
and ascension. It was guessed, indued, that he might be 
Elias, or some one of the old prophets, but we are only 
to see, in such struggles of conjecture, how powerfully 
he has already impressed the sense of his distinction, or 
separateness of character; for such guesses or conjectures 
were even absurd, unless the^y were instigated by previous 
impressions of something very peculiar in his unearthly 
manner, requiring to be accounted for. 



436 CHRIST AS SEPARATE. 

His miracles had undoubtedly something to do with the 
impression of his separateness from ordinary men, but a 
great many others, who were strictly human, have 
wrought miracles, without creating any such gulf be- 
tween them and mankind as we discover here. 

It is probably true also that the rumor of his being the 
Messiah, the great, long-expected prince and deliverer, 
had something to do in raising the impressions of men 
concerning him. But their views of the Messiah to come 
had prepared them to look only for some great hero and 
deliverer, and a kind of political millenium under his 
kingdom. There was nothing in their expectation that 
should separate him specially from mankind, as being a 
more than humanly superlative character. 

Pursuing then our inquiry, let us notice, in the first 
place, how the persons most remote and opposite, even 
they that finally conspired his death, were impressed or 
affected by him. They deny his Messiahship; they 
charge that only Beelzebub could help him do his mira- 
cles ; they are scandalized by his familiarity with publi- 
cans and sinners and other low people ; they arraign his 
doctrine as a heresy against many of the most sacred laws 
of their religion ; they charge him with the crime of 
breaking their Sabbath, and even with excess in eating 
and drinking; and yet we can easily see that there is 
growing up, in their minds, a most peculiar awe of his 
person. And it appears to be excited more by his man- 
ners and doctrine and a certain indescribable originality 
and sanctity in both, than by any thing else. His towns- 
man the Nazarenes, for example, were taken with sur- 
prise, by his discourses in the synagogue and elsewhere. 



FROM THE WORLD. 437 

knowing well that lie had never received the aids of 
learning. Is not this the carpenter's son? they inquired. 
Do we not all know his brothers and sisters, living here 
among us ? Whence then these gracious words that we 
hear him speak? When his wonderful sermon on the 
mount was ended, what said the multitude? The very 
point of their astonishment was that he spoke with such 
an original and strong authority, and not as the Scribes ; 
who were, in fact, the Sophists of Jewish learning, but 
were held in high respect as a learned order. The ex- 
pressions made use of by these hearers of Jesus indicate, 
in fact, a raising of their own thoughts by what they had 
heard, and the sense they had of some sacred and even 
celestial freshness in his manner and doctrine. Without 
including the centurion at Capernaum among his enemies, 
we may gather something from him, in respect to the 
probable impression made by the bearing and discourse 
of Jesus. He was a Roman, but appears withal to have 
been a man of religious worth and culture. He had even 
built a synagogue for the people of Capernaum, at his 
own expense. In that synagogue he had probably been re- 
warded in hearing Jesus speak ; for the Saviour had been 
making Capernaum a kind of center for some time past. 
But we observe that when he sends to Jesus to obtain the 
healing of his servant, he has been so deeply impressed 
with the Saviour's manner, that he does not presume 
on his military position as keeping guard over a van- 
quished country, takes on no high airs of negotiation, 
but even requests that Jesus will not think it neces- 
sary to come under his roof, for he is really not wor- 
thy of so great honor. He may have apprehended that 
Christ might have some religious scruples in lespect 



438 CHEIST AS SEPAKATE 

to the implied defilement of such intercourse with a nom- 
inal pagan. If so, there was the greater icspect in his 
delicacy. 

Beginning with impressions like these, we can easily see 
that the public mind is gradually becoming saturated with 
a kind of awe of his person ; as if he might be some higher, 
finer nature come into the world. This was the feeling 
that shook the courage of the traders and money-changers 
in the temple and made them fly, in such feeble panic be- 
fore him. For the same reason it was that a band of ofli- 
cers sent out at an early period, to arrest him, returned 
without having executed their commission ; for, they said, — - 
Never man spake like this man. Such words of clearness 
and repose and purity fell on them, as excited their imagin- 
ation, starting the conception apparently of one speaking 
out of eternity and worlds unknown. He put them un- 
der such constraints of fear, in short, by his words and man- 
ner, that they did not dare to arrest him. And just this 
kind of feeling grew upon the people, as his ministry 
advanced, till it became a superstition general ; for it is the 
way of minds infected by any such tendencies, to make 
ghosts of the fancy out of mere impressions of superior 
dignity, and even goodness. Hence, so far from suppos- 
ing that he could be captured as safely as a lamb, and with 
less of resistance, they appear to have had a kind of sus- 
picion that he would strike blind, or annihilate the first 
man that touched him. Indeed one reason why they 
wanted to get him in their power, apparently was, that he 
was reported to have given out his determination to shake 
down the temple, and they were even much concerned 
lest he might do it. Hence the problem with them was, 
not how to arrest any common man, or sinner of man- 



FROM THE WORLD. 439 

kind, but a superior, mysterious, fearful one, and there 
wanted, as they imagined, some kind of magic to do it. 
They took up thus an impression, that if they could sub- 
orn one of his followers, it would break the spell of his 
power and they could proceed safely. They bought off 
Judas accordingly, and he was to conduct them — not that 
they could not otherwise find the Saviour, not that Judas 
could do any thing physically in the matter of the arrest, 
which they could not do themselves ; but they seem to 
have imagined that if Judas would bring them directly 
before him, and speak to him, it would assure them, and 
be a kind of token to him that his power was broken ; 
for they believed greatly in spells and other such conceits 
of the fancy. And yet when they came upon him — a 
large band of marshals and assistants with torches and 
lanterns and all strong arms of defense — they w T ere smit- 
ten with such dread at the thought of being actually be- 
fore him, that they even reeled backward and fell to the 
ground! He was such a being, in their apprehension, that 
their chances of living another minute were doubtful ! 

It is easy also to see that Pilate, even after his arrest, is 
profoundly impressed with the sense of something supe- 
rior, more wise, or holy, or sacred, than he had seen be- 
fore. The dignity of Christ's answer, and also of his 
manner had awakened visibly a kind of awe in his mind. 
It was as if he had undertaken to question a king in- 
deed ; one superior in all majesty to himself. Unaccounta- 
bly to himself he grows superstitious, as if dealing with 
some divinity, he knows not who, and he can not so much 
as give his mere negative sentence of permission, pagan 
though he be, without washing his hands as religiously as 
if he were some Pharisee, to be clear of the guilt of the 



440 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

transaction. The centurion too, that kept guard by the 
cross, another Roman, is so affected, or impressed by the 
majestic manner of Jesus in his death, that he bears sponta- 
neous witness, out of his own feeling, probably in words 
which he had heard, but only dimly understood as having 
some very mysterious and high meaning, — Truly this was 
the Son of God! 

If now it should be objected here that the enemies of 
Jesus would never have dared to insult his person so bru- 
tally in his trial and crucifixion, if they had been really 
impressed, as we are supposing, with the wonderful sacred- 
ness and separateness of his character, it is enough to an- 
swer that exactly this is the manner of cowardice. Only 
yesterday these same men were in such awe of him that 
they trembled inwardly at the sound of his name ; and 
now that they find him strangely in their power, submit- 
ting to them in the meekness of a lamb, they grow brave, 
pleased to find that they can be ; and to make it sure, they 
multiply their blows and other indignities, in a manner of 
low and really ignominious triumph over him. But how 
soon does the true shame and bitterness of their sin return 
upon them. For when they saw the funeral weeds of 
nature's sorrow hung over the sun, and felt the shuddering 
ague of the world, their spirit fell again. And all the 
people, says Luke, that came together to that sight, be- 
holding the things that were done, smote their breasts and 
returned. 

Turn now, secondly, to the disciples, and observe how 
they were impressed or affected by the manner and spirit 
of Jesus. And here the remarkable thing is, that the}' 
appear to be more and more impressed with the distance 



FROM THE WORLD. 441 

"between him and themselves, the longer ihey know him 
and the more intimate and familiar their acquaintance with 
him. He took possession of them strangely even at the 
very first, much as you will see in the case of Matthew the 
publican. The man is sitting at the receipt of custom, 
and Christ, who is passing by, says to him — Come, follow 
nie. That word has a mvsterv in it, which can not be 
withstood ; he forsakes all and follows at command. At 
first, however, the impression had of Jesus is more shallow 
in all the disciples. It fared with them much as with the 
woman at the well, who took him first, for a common 
traveler, then for a prophet, and finally as the great Mes- 
siah, having only the faintest conception of him probably 
even then. But they grew more and more impressed with 
his greatness, and the strangeness of his quality ; for there 
was so much in his authority, purity, love, wisdom, that 
they could only spell him out by syllables. 

Thus we may take Peter as an example for all the oth- 
ers ; for, in the surname, Peter, that was early given him 
by his Master, and also by the promipo that on him, as the 
rock of its foundation, the church wa£ to be built, every 
thing w r as done to keep him assured and help him to 
maintain a footing of confidence. How then was it, as he 
came into closer acquaintance with his Master? At the 
first, when his brother Andrew conducted him to Jesus, 
he felt much as his brother did the day before, when he 
and his friend, having heard John's remarkable apostro- 
phe — Behold the Lamb of God — accosted him freely, put 
themselves, as it were, upon him and spent, if we may 
judge, whole hours in their priv?^ questioning. Peter's 
exclamation, shortly after, at thf r.Iraculous draught of 
fishes, — Depart from me Lord t 'or I am a sinful man, 



44:2 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

might seem to indicate a very wide sense of distance al- 
ready felt between him and Christ ; but it rather signifies 
after all the violence of his wonder at the miracle, than 
any deep moral sense of the dignity, purity, and superioi 
majesty of Christ. Accordingly it will be seen, sometime 
after this, that he is bold enough to take the Saviour to 
account and rebuke him, with a degree of emphasis not a 
little offensive, for the conceit of it. At the washing of 
the disciples' feet he breaks out again less boldly, but as 
soon as he finds that he is in a mistake, recalls his strong 
asseveration, saying in the gentlest manner, — not my feet 
only, but my hands and my head. Then again, at the 
scene of the table, where the revelation is — "One of you 
shall betray me," he has been so far removed, sunk so low, 
by the wonderful discourses of Jesus to which he has 
been listening, that he does not even dare to accost his 
Master with a question spoken aloud, but beckons to 
John to whisper it for him, as he lies reclining on the 
Saviour's breast. Then, once more, after having openly 
denied him and foresworn all connection with him, 
seeing that he is now stripped of his power, and his 
very Messiahship is a virtually exploded hope, Peter is 
nevertheless under such an habitual awe of his person, 
that the simply catching a look of his eye, as he goes out 
of the hall of Caiaphas, and seeing it turned full upon 
him, breaks him quite down, and even overwhelms him 
With sorrow. He was in the most unlikely mood for it 
possible ; fresh in the wrong, flushed by the very oaths 
he has taken, all in a tremor, unstrung for any considera- 
tion of truth by the inward disturbance of his falsity, and 
yet he is riven by that mere look of Jesus, as if it were 
a glance of the Almighty. 



FKOM THE WORLD. 448 

The same thing could be shown by other examples, 
but it must suffice to say that, while the miracles of 
Christ do not increase in grandeur with the advance of 
his ministry, his disciples are visibly growing all the while 
more and more impressed with the sense of distance be- 
tween him and themselves, and of some unknown, trans- 
cendent mystery, by which he is separated, as another kind 
of being, from the world he is in. This, in part, is theii 
blessing; for, as they are humbled in it, so they are raised 
by it, feel the birth of new affinities, rise to higher thoughts, 
and are wakened to a conscious struggle after God. 

What now, thirdly, is the solution of this profound im- 
pression of separateness, made by Christ on the world? 
That his miracles and the repute of his Messiahship do not 
wholly account for it we have already observed. It may 
be imagined by some that he produced this impression 
artificially by means of certain scenes and observances 
designed to widen out the distance between him and the 
race ; for, how could he otherwise obtain that power over 
them which he was properly entitled to have, by his own 
real eminence, unless he took some pains to set them in 
attitudes in which his eminence might be felt. In other 
words, if he is to have more than a man's power, he must 
somehow be more than a man. Thus, when he says to his 
mother, — Woman, what have I to do with thee, my hour 
is not yet come? or when, being notified that his mother 
and brethren are standing without waiting to see him, he 
asks, — Who then is my mother and who are my brethren ? 
it will be imagined that he is purposely suggesting his 
higher derivation and his more transcendent affinities. 
But, even if it were so, it must be understood only that he 



444 CHRIS! AS SEPARATE 

is speaking out of his spiritual consciousness, claiming 
thus affinity with God and with those who shall embrace 
him in the eternal brotherhood of faith; not as boasting 
the hight of his natural sonship. 

So, again, in the scene of the baptism and the vision 
of the dove descending upon him, introduced by the very 
strange outburst of prophetic utterance in John, when he 
sees the Saviour coming, — Behold the Lamb of God, that 
taketh away the sins of the world! it may be imagined 
that the design is to usher him into his ministry as a su- 
perior being. But what, in that view, shall we say of the 
great soul-struggle previous, called the temptation? It is 
not to be denied that the scene of the baptism connects 
impressions of some very exalted quality in the subject, 
and yet, if we bring in the temptation, and regard the 
transaction as a solemn inaugural of Christ's great minis- 
try, — Grod's act of separation, his own act of assumption 
here passed, — there is nothing in it to set him off distinctly 
from men, save as he is set off by his character and his 
consecration to his work. Indeed, no one took up the im- 
pression from this inaugural scene that he was a being 
above the human order. 

On a certain occasion he is transfigured, and Moses and 
EHas appear as only secondary figures in the scene ; by 
which it may be designed, some will fancy, to widen out 
the chasm between himself and men, showing himself to 
be the compeer and more, — even the Lord of angels and 
glorified spirits. This may have been the design, or rather 
it probably was ; at least, so far as to have that effect on 
the future ages ; for it was important, we may believe, to 
right impressions of his person, in the coming time, that 
his excellent glory should some time have been discovered 



FROM THE WOELD 445 

or uncovered to men, and the facts reported as historical 
proofs of his divinity. But it does not appear that the 
three, by whom the transfiguration was seen and reported 
ever disclosed the fact during the Saviour's life-time ; and 
it is remarkable that one of these, even after the fact, had 
such confidence and assurance toward his dear Lord, that 
he even dared to lay Ids head on that once transfigured 
breast ! In which it is made clear that, however much wo 
may imagine Christ to have been lifted in order by the 
scene of the transfiguration, he still remained a properly 
fellow nature, even to one who was present as a beholder; 
who felt, in his deepest center, the separateness of Christ, and 
the transcendent mystery of his character, but does not 
appear to have been at all removed, or thrown out of con- 
fidence by the sacred awe in which he saw him invested. 
He could never have laid his head on the bosom of a per- 
son regarded as being really deific. 

But what shall we say of the really astounding assump- 
tions put forth by Christ ? Were they not designed as 
declarations, or assertions of a superhuman order in his 
natural person ? When he asks, — Who convinceth me of 
sin ? when he declares, — Ye are from beneath, I am from 
above, — I am the bread that cometh down from heaven ; 
when he dares to use the pronoun we, as relating to him- 
self and the Father, — We will come unto him, and make 
our abode with him ; when he speaks of the glory he had 
with the Father before the world was ; when he engages, 
himself, to send down the Holy Spirit after his ascension, — - 
I will send you another comforter ; when he claims to be 
the judge of the world, and speaks of holding the world's 
throne ; nay, when, to give his most ordinary and familiar 
mode of doctrine, he says, — I am the way, the truth, and 

38 



446 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

the life ; no man cometli unto the Father but by me ; it is 
most certainly true, that he is challenging, in all such 
utterances, honors and prerogatives that are not human. 
At the same time, if he had not before separated himself 
heaven-wide from men, by his character, and produced, in 
that manner, a sense of some wonderful mystery in him, 
he would have been utterly scouted and hooted out of the 
world for his preposterous assumptions. These very as- 
sumptions, therefore, presuppose a separation already real- 
ized, even more remarkable than that which is claimed, or 
asserted. Indeed, the minds of his disciples were so much 
occupied with the impressions they felt, under the realities 
of his character, that they scarcely attended to the strange 
assumptions of his words, and did not even seem to have 
taken their meaning till after his death. 

The remarkable separation, therefore, of Christ from the 
sinners of mankind, and the impression he awakened m 
them of that separation, was made, not by scenes, nor by 
words of assertion, nor by any thing designed for that 
purpose, but it grew out of his life and character, — his un- 
worldliness, holiness, purity, truth, love ; the dignity of his 
feeling, the transcendent wisdom and grace of his conduct. 
He was manifestly one that stood apart from the world, in 
his profoundest human sympathy with it. He often spent 
his nights in solitary prayer, closeted with God in the re- 
cesses of the mountains. He was plainly not under the 
world, or any fashions of human opinion. He was able 
to be singular, without apparently desiring it, and by the 
gimple force of his superiority. Conventionalities had no 
power over him, learning no authority with him. He bor- 
rowed nothing from men. His very thoughts appeared to 
be coined in the mint of some wisdom higher than human. 



FROM THE WORLD. 447 

There was also this distinction in all his virtues, that they 
did not open, like those of men at the larger end, growing 
less and less, the further in they might be penetrated ; but 
at the smaller, as if no strain, or ostentation were possible, 
growing larger therefore, and wider, and fuller, the more 
conversant and the more familiar with them any one might 
be. His whole ministry, therefore; was a kind of discovery 
and so a process of separation. The purity of his life 
grew tall ; the truth of his doctrine more than mortal, or 
that of any mortal prophet ; his love itself deific ; and so — 
this is the grandeur and glory of his life, — he rose up out 
of humanity or the human level into deity and the sepa- 
rate order of uncreated life, by the mere force of his man- 
ner and character, and achieved, as man, the sense of a di- 
vine excellence, before his personal order as the Son of 
God was conceived. And so it finally became established 
in men's feeling, as it stood in his last prayer, that there 
was some inexplicable oneness, where his inmost life and 
spirit merged in the divine and became identical. His 
human fire had already mingled its blaze with the great 
central sun of deity. 

Accordingly what we see in his resurrection and ascen- 
sion, and the scenes of intercourse between, is only a kind 
of final consummation, or complete rendering of what was 
already in men's hearts. There it begins to come out thai 
he is the King, even the Lord of Glory. Death can not 
hold him. The earth can not fasten him. The parting 
clouds receive him and let him through to his throne, not 
more truly but only more visibly separate than before, in 
that he is made higher than the heavens. 

How great a thing now is it, my hearers, that such a 



448 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

being lias come into our world and lived in it, — a being 
above mortality while in it ; a being separate from sinners, 
bringing unto sinners, by a fellow nature, what is trans- 
cendent and even deific in the divine holiness and love. 
Yes, we have had a visitor among us, living out, in the 
molds of human conduct and feeling, the perfections of 
God' What an importation of glory and truth! Who, 
that lives, a man, can ever after this think it a low and 
common thing to fill these spheres, walk in these ranges 
of life, and do these works of duty, which have been 
raised so high, by the life of Jesus in the flesh! The 
world is no more the same that it was. All its main ideas 
and ideals are raised. A kind of sacred glory invests 
even our humblest spheres and most common concerns. 

Consider, again, as one of the points deducible from the 
truth we have been considering, how little reason is given 
us, in the mission of Christ, for the hope that God, who haa 
such love to man, will not allow us to fail of salvation, by 
reason of any mere defect, or neglect, of application to 
Christ. What then does this peculiar separateness of 
Christ signify? Coming into the world to save it, taking 
on him our nature that he may draw himself as close to 
us as possible, what is growing all the while to be more 
and more felt in men's bosoms, but a sense of ever- widen- 
ing, ever-deepening, and, in some sense, incommunicable 
separateness from him? And this, you will observe, is the 
separateness, not of condition, but of character. Nay, it 
grows out of his very love to us in part, and his profound 
oneness with us ; for it is a love so pure and gentle, so 
patient, so disinterested, so self-sacrificing, that it parts 
him from us, in the very act of embrace, and makes \\s 



FROM THE WORLD. 449 

think of him even with awe ! How then will it be, when 
he is met in the condition of his glory, and the guise of his 
humanity is laid off? There is nothing then to put him at 
one with us, or us at one with him, but just that incom- 
municable and separate character which fills us even here 
with dread. If then your very Saviour grows more and 
more separated from you, in all your impressions, the more 
you see of him, how will it be, when you drop the flesh 
and go to meet him, invested only in your proper character 
of sin? If before you thought of him with awe, and even 
with a holy dread, how little confidence will be left you 
there, when you see him in the fullness of his glory, even 
that which he had with the Father before the world was. 
If he was separate before, how inevitably, insupportably 
separate now. 

Consider also and accurately distinguish, as here we 
may easily do, what is meant by holiness, and what espe- 
cially is its power, or the law of its power. Holiness is 
not what we may do or become, in mere self-activity 01 
self-culture, but it is the sense of a separated quality, in 
one who lives on a footing of intimacy and oneness with 
God. The original word, represented by our word holi- 
ness , means separation, or scparateness ; the character of 
being drawn apart, or exalted, by being consecrated to God 
and filled with inspiration from God. It supposes noth- 
ing unsocial, withdraws no one from those living s}mipa- 
thies that gladden human life. On the contrary, it quick- 
ens all most gentle and loving affinities and brings the 
subject just as much closer in feeling to his fellow-man, as 
he is. closer to God, and less centralized in himself. But 
it changes the look or expression, raising, in that man- 

38* 



450 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

ner, the apparent grade of the subject and separating him 
from whatever is of the world, or under the spirit of the 
world. He is not simply a man as before, but he is more, 
a man exalted, hallowed, glorified. The divine tempera 
are in him, the power of the world is fallen off, his words 
have a different accent, his acts an air of repose, dignity, 
sanctity, and the result is that mankind feel him as one 
somehow become superior. It stirs their conscience to 
speak with him, it puts them under impressions that are 
consciously not of man alone. This is holiness — the con- 
dition of a man, when he is separated visibly from the 
world and raised above it, by a divine participation. It 
is, in fact, the greatest power ever exerted by man, being 
not the power of man, but only of God himself manifested 
in him. 

But the great and principal lesson derivable from this 
subject is, that Christianity is a regenerative power upon the 
world, only as it comes into the world in a separated charac- 
ter, as a revelation, or sacred importation of holiness. 

Wc have in these times, a very considerable and quite 
pretentious class, who have made the discovery that Christ 
actually eat with publicans and sinners ! This fact indeed 
is their gospel. Christ they say was social, drew himself 
to every human being, poured his heart into every human 
joy and woe, lived in no ascetic manner as a being with- 
drawn from life. And so it becomes a principal matter of 
duty with us, to meet all human conditions in a human 
way and make ourselves acceptable to all. They do not 
observe that Jesus brought in something into every scene 
of society and hospitality, which showed a mind set off 
from all conformities. When he eat with publicans and 



FROM THE WORLD. 451 

sinners, lie declared expressly that he did it as a physician 
goes to the sick, did it that he might so call sinners to re- 
pentance. So when he dined with Zaccheus, he there pro- 
claimed himself the Son of Man, who was come to save 
the lost. When he shared the assiduous hospitality of 
Martha, what did he but remind her of the one thing 
needful, quite passed by in her over-doing carefulness? 
And when he dined with one of the great rich men of the 
Pharisees, what did he but strike at the very usurpation 
of all high fashion, by openly rebuking those who seized 
on the highest places of precedence? and what did he pro- 
pose to the host himself, but that true hospitality is that 
which is given, with no hope of return? — in which also, he 
touched the very quick of all heartlessness and all real 
mockery in what is called society. Yes, it is true that Je- 
sus eat with publicans and sinners. He never stood apart 
from any advance of men. But how visibly separated was 
he there and everywhere, from the shallow convention- 
alities of the world; how pure, majestic, free, and faithful 
to his great ministry of salvation ! 

We have also a great many schemes of philanthropy 
started in these days, that suppose a preparation of man, 
or society to be moved directly forward, on its present 
plane, into some advanced, or nearly paradisaic state. 
The manner is to address men at their present point, in 
their present motive, under their present condition, with 
some hope of development, oome scheme, truth, organiza- 
tion, and so to bring them into some compact, or way of 
life that will discontinue the present evils and make a 
happy state. As if there were any such feasibility to 
good in man, that he can be put in felicity by mere invita- 
tion, or consent ! Christ and Christianity think otherwise. 



452 CHEIST AS SEPARATE 

For the blessed Kedeemer comes into the world, in tha 
full understanding that, in being identified with the worlc^ 
lie will become a great power, only as he is also separated 
from it. And in this lies the efficacy of his mission, that 
lie brings to men what is not in them, what is opposite to 
them, the separated glory, the holiness of God. Come 
then ye holiday saviours, ye reformers, and philanthropic 
regenerators of the world, send forth your invitations to 
society, summon the world to come near and make even a 
fixed contract to be happy, and one that shall be indisso- 
luble forever! Bring out your paper coaches and bid 
the sorrow stricken peoples ride forth, down the new 
millenium you promise without prophecy ; do your utmost ; 
stimulate every most confident hope, and then see what 
your toy-shop apparatus signifies ! 

No, we want a salvation, which means a grace brought 
into the world, that is not of it. When the real Saviour 
comes, there will be great falling off, for the thoughts of 
many hearts will be revealed. He will not be a popular Sa- 
viour. He that puts men in awe, as of some higher' spirit 
and more divine of which they know nothing; he that visits 
the world to be unworldly in it, and draw men apart from 
it and break its terrible spell — he, I say, will not be hailed 
with favor and applause. Indeed I very much fear that 
many who assume even now to be his disciples, would 
not like him, if he were to appear on earth. His un- 
worldly manner, his profound singularity as a being supe- 
rior to sin, and to all human conventionalities, would 
offend them, and drive them quite away. Who of us, here 
to-day, would really follow Jesus and cleave to him, if he 
were now living among us? 

This brings me to speak of what is now the great and 



FROM THE WORLD 453 

desolating erroi of our times. I mean the general con- 
formity of the followers of Christ to the maimers and 
ways, and, consequently, in a great degree, to the spirit of 
the world. Christ had his power, as we have seen, in the 
fact that he carried the impression of his separateness from 
it, and his superiority to it. He was no ascetic, his sepa- 
ration no contrived and prescribed separation, but was 
only the more real and radical that it was the very instinct, 
or freest impulse of his character. He could say; — The 
prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me; 
counting the bad kingdom to be only a paste-board affair, 
whose laws and ways were but a vain show, that he could 
not even so much as feel. This now is what we want, 
such a fullness of divine participation, that we shall not 
require to be always shutting off the world by prescribed 
denials, but shall draw off from it naturally,because we are 
not of it. A true Christian, one who is deep enough in the 
godly life to have his affinities with God, will infallibly be* 
come a separated being. The instinct of holiness will draw 
him apart into a singular, superior, hidden life with God. 
And this is the true Christian power, besides which there 
is no other. And when this fails every thing goes with it. 
Neither let us be deceived in this matter, by our merely 
notional wisdoms, or deliberative judgments, for it is not a 
matter to be decided by any consideration of results — the 
question never is, what is really harmful and so, wrong, 
but what will meet the living and free instinct of a life of 
prayer and true godliness ? I confess that when the ques- 
tion is raised, whether certain common forms of society 
and amusement are to be indulged or disallowed, the argu- 
ment sometimes appears to preponderate on the side of in- 
dulgence. What is more innocent ?- -must we take the mo- 



454 CHRIST AS SEPARATE 

rose and, as it were, repugnant attitude of disallowing and 
rejecting every thing harmless that is approved by men? 
in what other way could we more certainly offend their 
good judgment and alienate their personal confidence? 
ought we not even to yield a certain allowable freedom 
for their sake ? So stands the computation. Let it be 
granted that, as a matter of deliberation, the scale is turned 
for conformity. And yet the decision taken will not stand ; 
for there is no truly living Christian that wants, or at all 
relishes such conformities. On the other hand, you will 
see that such as argue for them and make interest in them, 
however well disposed in matters philanthropic, have little 
or nothing in them of that which is the distinctively Chris- 
tian power, and do not add any thing to the living impres- 
sion of the gospel. For the radical element of all great 
impression is wanting — viz., the sense of a separated life. 
Their instinct does not run that way. What they want 
is conformity, more conformity, to be always like the 
world, not different from it, and in that gulf they sink, 
lost to all good effect, nay a hindrance to all. 

There is no greater mistake, as regards the true manner 
of impression on the world, than that we impress it as 
being homogeneous with it. If, in our dress we show the 
same extravagance, if our amusements are theirs without 
a distinction, if we follow after their shows, copy their man- 
ners, bury ourselves in their worldly objects, emulate their 
fashions, what are we different from them ? It seems quite 
plausible to fancy the great honor we shall put on religion^ 
when we are able to c et it on a footing with all most 
worldly things, and show that we can be Christians in 
that plausible way. This we call a liberal piety. It ia 
such as can excel in all high tastes, and make up a figure 



FROM THE WOULD. 455 

of beauty that must needs be a great commendation, we 
think, to religion. It may be a little better than to be 
openly apostate ; but alas ! there is how little power in 
such a kind of life! 2s o, it is not conformity that we 
want, it is not being able to beat the world in its own 
way, but it is to stand apart from it, and produce the im- 
pression of a separated life ; this it is and this only, that 
yields any proper sense of the true Christian power. It 
is not the being popular that makes one a help to religion, 
no holy man was ever a truly popular character. Ever 
Christ himself, bringing the divine beauty into the world, 
profoundly disturbed the quiet of men by his very per- 
fections. All really bad men adhering to their sin, hated 
him, and their animosity was finally raised to such a pitch, 
that they crucified him. And what does he say, turning 
to his disciples, but this xery thing — The servant is not 
greater than his lord — if they have persecuted me they 
will persecute you. I have chosen you out of the world, 
therefore the world hateth you. ^Ve are certainly not to 
make a merit of being hated, for the worst and most 
wicked can do that ; as little are we to make a merit of 
popularity and being even with the world in its ways. 
There is no just mode of life, no true holiness, or fruit of 
holy living, if we do not carry the conviction, by our self- 
denial, our sobriety in the matter of show, and our with- 
holding from all that indicates being under the world, that 
we are in a life separated to God. Therefore his great call 
is — Come out from among them and be ye separate and 
touch not the unclean thing, and ye shall be my sons and 
daughters saith the Lord Almighty. And there is a 
most profound philosophy in this. If we are to impress 
the world we must be separate from sinners, even as Christ 



456 CHRIST AS SEPARATE, ETC. 

our Master was } or at least according to our human degree, 
as being in his spirit. The great difficulty is that we think 
to impress the world, standing on the world's own leve] 
and asking its approbation. We conform too easily and 
with too much appetite. We are all the while touching 
the unclean thing, bowing down to it, accepting its law, 
eager to be found approved in it. God therefore calls us 
away. that we could take our lesson here, and plan 
our life, order our pursuits, choose our relaxations, prepare 
our families, so as to be truly with Christ, and so in fact 
that we ourselves can say, each for himself, — The prince 
of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. 

And this exactly is our communion with Jesus ; we pro- 
pose to be one with him in it. In it, we connect with a pow- 
er transcendent, the Son of Man in glory, whose image we 
aspire to, and whose mission, as the Crucified on earth, was 
the revelation of the Father's love and holiness. We ask 
to be separated with him and set apart to the same great 
life. Our communion is not on the level of our common 
humanitv, but we rise in it ; we scale the heavens where he 
sitteth at the right hand of God ; we send our longings up 
and ask to have attachments knit to him ; to be set in deep- 
est, holiest, and most practical affinity with him ; and so to 
live a life that is hid with Christ in God. In such a life, 
we become partakers of his holiness, and, in the separating 
grace of that, partakers also of his power. 



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